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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850 127 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
Difference: 23 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850 128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (more or less 24%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850 37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 7200 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850 24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 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 1GB

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 1GB Radeon HD 6850
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 October 2010
Code Name RV770 XT Barts Pro
Memory 1024 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 1GB

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.

Comments

One Response to “Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850”
Möglichst preisgünstige, gleichwertige Ersatzkarte zur HD4870? - Diablo 3 Forum | inDiablo.de by ingame™ says:

[...] zu einer Karte aus dem Performancesegment wie die HD6850/6870 sieht es schon ganz anders aus (siehe hier). Preis liegt bei ca. 130 Euro für eine 6850. Die Leistungsaufnahme dieser Karten ist ebenfalls [...]

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