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Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 975 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB 190 Watts
Radeon HD 6970 250 Watts
Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 124800 MB/sec
Difference: 51200 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (more or less 111%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 40000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 44480 (111%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970 28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 16000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 12160 (76%)

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 6970

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 4890 2GB Radeon HD 6970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Apr 2, 2009 December 2010
Code Name RV790 XT Cayman XT
Memory 2048 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 1000 MHz 880 MHz
Memory Speed 3900 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 190 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 124800 MB/sec 176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 40000 Mtexels/sec 84480 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16000 Mpixels/sec 28160 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1536
Texture Mapping Units 40 96
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 959 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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6970

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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