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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which features GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 theoretically be a little bit better than 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 much (approximately 24%) faster with regards to 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

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (approximately 107%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum 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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