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Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB comes with a GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM runs at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 Stream Processors, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850 127 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 150 Watts
Difference: 23 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850 128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (about 24%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850 37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 7200 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (more or less 107%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850 24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 12800 (107%)

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 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6850

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 4870 512MB Radeon HD 6850
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 October 2010
Code Name RV770 XT Barts Pro
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 775 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 127 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 37200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 24800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 960
Texture Mapping Units 40 48
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6850

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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