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Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB features a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 250 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 44 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 127104 MB/sec
Difference: 128896 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (more or less 364%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 50000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 182000 (364%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 20000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 72800 (364%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

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 4850 X2 1GB Radeon HD 5970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 7, 2008 November 2009
Code Name R700 Hemlock XT
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 625 MHz (x2) 725 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 1986 MHz (x2) 4000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 294 watts
Bandwidth 127104 MB/sec 256000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 50000 Mtexels/sec 232000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 20000 Mpixels/sec 92800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) (x2) 1600 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 40 (x2) 160 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 64 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge) 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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

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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