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Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB has a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 127104 MB/sec
Difference: 136896 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (more or less 137%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 50000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 68400 (137%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (approximately 48%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB 20000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 9600 (48%)

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 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7970

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 4850 X2 512MB Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 7, 2008 January 2012
Code Name R700 Tahiti XT
Memory 512 MB (x2) 3072 MB
Core Speed 625 MHz (x2) 925 MHz
Memory Speed 1986 MHz (x2) 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 127104 MB/sec 264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 50000 Mtexels/sec 118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 20000 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 GDDR3 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - 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 512MB

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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