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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB comes with a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular card. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 17% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 19200 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (more or less 68%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (approximately 140%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 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 1GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6870

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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 1GB Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 October 2010
Code Name RV770 XT Barts XT
Memory 1024 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially 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 1GB

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.

Comments

One Response to “Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870”
Verkaufe Einiges an Hardware... - TweakPC Hardware Forum says:

[...] Einiges an Hardware... nachfolger sind in der regel immer besser Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare dadazu kommt noch das die 6870 nicht nur schneller sondern auch mehr futures hat DirectX11 usw. [...]

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