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Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB comes with a GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM runs at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which features GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB 150 Watts
Radeon HD 6870 151 Watts
Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 19200 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (approximately 68%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 16800 (140%)

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 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

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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 512MB Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 October 2010
Code Name RV770 XT Barts XT
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 900 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 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 956 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 512MB

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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