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Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 975 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 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 190 Watts
Difference: 39 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 124800 MB/sec
Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (approximately 31%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 40000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (about 45%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 16000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 7200 (45%)

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 5850

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 4890 2GB Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Apr 2, 2009 September 30, 2009
Code Name RV790 XT Cypress PRO
Memory 2048 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 1000 MHz 725 MHz
Memory Speed 3900 MHz 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 190 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 124800 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 40000 Mtexels/sec 52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16000 Mpixels/sec 23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units 40 72
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 959 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

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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