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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB has a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
Radeon HD 6870 151 Watts
Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 19200 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (about 68%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 16800 (140%)

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 6870

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 6870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 October 2010
Code Name RV770 XT Barts XT
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 900 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1120
Texture Mapping Units 40 56
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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

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 6870”
Verkaufe Einiges an Hardware... - TweakPC Hardware Forum says:

[...] Einiges an Hardware... nachfolger sind in der regel immer besser Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare dadazu kommt noch das die 6870 nicht nur schneller sondern auch mehr futures hat DirectX11 usw. [...]

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