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Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 features core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970 250 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2 350 Watts
Difference: 100 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 230400 MB/sec
Difference: 33600 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (approximately 97%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 60000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 58400 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 24000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5600 (23%)

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 4870 X2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7970

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 X2 Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Aug 12, 2008 January 2012
Code Name R700 Tahiti XT
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 3072 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz (x2) 925 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz (x2) 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 350 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 230400 MB/sec 264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 60000 Mtexels/sec 118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 24000 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) (x2) 2048
Texture Mapping Units 40 (x2) 128
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 384-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors 956 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge) PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7970

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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