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Radeon HD 4790 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 4790 uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790 102400 MB/sec
Difference: 24704 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 160%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790 19200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 30800 (160%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790 9600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 10400 (108%)

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 4790

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

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 4790 Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year 2009 Nov 7, 2008
Code Name RV790 R700
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 600 MHz 625 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 3200 MHz 1986 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) (Unknown) watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 102400 MB/sec 127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate 19200 Mtexels/sec 50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 9600 Mpixels/sec 20000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 640(128x5) 800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 32 40 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 55 nm 55 nm
Transistors 959 million 956 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

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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