Sapphire HD 4870 Video Card Review
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To make the comparison between Sapphire HD 4870 and the other video cards we included in this review easier, we compiled the table below comparing the main specs from these cards. If you want to compare the specs of Radeon HD 4870 to any other video card not included in the table below, just take a look at our NVIDIA Chips Comparison Table and on our AMD ATI Chips Comparison Table.
| GPU | Core Clock | Shader Clock | Processors | Memory Clock | Memory Interface | Memory Transfer Rate | Memory | Price |
| GeForce GTX 280 | 602 MHz | 1,296 MHz | 240 | 1,107 MHz | 512-bit | 141.7 GB/s | 1 GB GDDR3 | USD 430-475 |
| XFX GeForce GTX 260 640M XXX | 640 MHz | 1,363 MHz | 192 | 1,150 MHz | 448-bit | 128.8 GB/s | 896 MB GDDR3 | USD 330 |
| GeForce GTX 260 | 576 MHz | 1,242 MHz | 192 | 1,000 MHz | 448-bit | 112 GB/s | 896 MB GDDR3 | USD 290-320 |
| GeForce 9800 GX2 | 600 MHz | 1,500 MHz | 128 | 1,000 MHz | 256-bit | 64 GB/s | 1 GB GDDR3 | USD 370-500 |
| GeForce 9800 GTX | 675 MHz | 1,688 MHz | 128 | 1,100 MHz | 256-bit | 70.4 GB/s | 512 MB GDDR3 | USD 185 – 325 |
| Radeon HD 4870 | 750 MHz | 750 MHz | 800 | 900 MHz | 256-bit | 115.2 GB/s | 512 MB GDDR5 | USD 285 |
| Radeon HD 4850 | 625 MHz | 625 MHz | 800 | 993 MHz | 256-bit | 63.5 GB/s | 512 MB GDDR3 | USD 175 |
| Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 X2 | 857 MHz | 857 MHz | 320 | 927 MHz | 256-bit | 59.3 GB/s | 1 GB GDDR3 | – |
| Radeon HD 3870 | 776 MHz | 776 MHz | 320 | 1,125 MHz | 256-bit | 72 GB/s | 512 MB GDDR4 | USD 125 – 180 |
As you can see the main difference between the new Radeon HD 4870 and its competitors is the amazing number of processing units, 800 against 192 on GeForce GTX 260, for example.
It is important to note that this table reflects the current prices for the listed video cards, which are lower than the prices we published in other reviews, since prices tend to drop every day. NVIDIA is now pushing their partners to sell GeForce GTX 280 for USD 500 (from the original USD 650 MRSP), GeForce GTX 260 for USD 300 (from the original USD 400 MRSP) and GeForce 9800 GTX for USD 199.
With these new prices the main competitor to Sapphire HD 4870 is GeForce GTX 260.
The only high-end video card not included in our comparison is GeForce 9800 GTX+, which is basically an overclocked GeForce 9800 GTX.
Some important observations regarding this table:
- All NVIDIA chips are DirectX 10 (Shader 4.0), while all AMD/ATI chips are DirectX 10.1 (Shader 4.1).
- The memory clocks listed are the real memory clock. Memory clocks are often advertised as double the figures presented, numbers known as “DDR clock.” Radeon HD 4870 uses GDDR5 chips, which transfer four data per clock cycle and thus the “DDR clock” for this video card is four times the value presented on this table (i.e., 3.6 GHz).
- GeForce 9800 GX2 and Radeon HD 3870 X2 have two GPU’s. The numbers on the table represent only one of the chips.
- All video cards included on our review were running at the chip manufacturer default clock configuration (i.e., no overclocking), except Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 X2 and XFX GeForce GTX 260 640M XXX. The official core clock for Radeon HD 3870 X2 is 825 MHz, while the official memory clock is 900 MHz. So this card was a little bit overclocked. We couldn’t reduce these clocks to their reference values and since we hadn’t any other Radeon HD 3870 X2 available we included this video card anyway.
- Prices were researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.
- We couldn’t find Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 X2 for sale. This model will be more expensive than cards from other vendors based on the same GPU because it features water cooling. Just for you to have an idea, prices on the regular Radeon 3870 X2 are quoted between USD 260 and USD 370.
Before going to our tests let’s recap the main features from Sapphire HD 4870.