Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 70%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (approximately 70%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.