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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB comes with a GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM runs at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB 200 Watts
Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 135%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 40400 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (approximately 113%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB 25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 13600 (113%)

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 6950 2GB

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 1GB Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 December 2010
Code Name RV770 XT Cayman Pro
Memory 1024 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1408
Texture Mapping Units 40 88
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 2640 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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950 2GB

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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