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Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870 151 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 190 Watts
Difference: 39 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6870 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 124800 MB/sec
Difference: 9600 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (more or less 26%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 40000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 10400 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (about 80%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 16000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 12800 (80%)

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.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

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 4890 2GB Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Apr 2, 2009 October 2010
Code Name RV790 XT Barts XT
Memory 2048 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 1000 MHz 900 MHz
Memory Speed 3900 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 190 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 124800 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 40000 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16000 Mpixels/sec 28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1120
Texture Mapping Units 40 56
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 959 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

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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