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Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 comes with a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which features clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2 350 Watts
Difference: 199 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 230400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 102400 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a little bit (about 15%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 60000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 7800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 800 (3%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4870 X2 Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Aug 12, 2008 September 30, 2009
Code Name R700 Cypress PRO
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz (x2) 725 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz (x2) 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 350 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 230400 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 60000 Mtexels/sec 52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 24000 Mpixels/sec 23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) (x2) 1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units 40 (x2) 72
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge) PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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