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ATI Radeon HD 4870

ATI Radeon HD 4870: A Retrospective of a Legend and Its Place in 2025

Introduction

Released in 2008, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 was a true breakthrough for its time. This graphics card not only challenged NVIDIA's dominance but also set new performance standards in the budget segment. However, in 2025, the HD 4870 has become an artifact of a bygone era, more interesting to enthusiasts and collectors than to gamers. Let’s delve into what made it memorable and why today it can only be viewed in a historical context.

1. Architecture and Key Features

RV770 Architecture: The Foundation of Power

The HD 4870 is built on the RV770 architecture with a 55 nm manufacturing process. It included 800 stream processors—a formidable number for the late 2000s. The card supported DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3, allowing it to perform confidently with games of its time.

Lack of Modern Technologies

The HD 4870 arrived long before the era of ray tracing (RTX), upscaling (DLSS, FidelityFX), and other innovations. Its functionality was limited to basic rendering features such as anti-aliasing and tessellation. For 2025, this renders the card unsuitable for modern games and professional tasks that require support for DirectX 12 Ultimate or Vulkan.

2. Memory: Speed and Limitations

GDDR5—The Revolution of 2008

The HD 4870 was one of the first to use GDDR5 memory with an effective clock speed of 3.6 GHz (900 MHz physical). It came with either 512 MB or 1 GB of memory (depending on the variant), and a 256-bit memory bus. The bandwidth reached 115.2 GB/s, which allowed it to outrun even NVIDIA's flagship models in 2008.

Issues in 2025

For modern games and applications, 512 MB/1 GB of memory is catastrophically low. For instance, even the minimum requirements for games in 2025 start at 4-6 GB of VRAM. Furthermore, GDDR5 falls short in energy efficiency and speed compared to modern standards like GDDR6X and HBM3.

3. Gaming Performance: Then and Now

The Splendor of 2008–2010

At its peak, the HD 4870 delivered 30–60 FPS in titles like Crysis (Medium, 1080p), Fallout 3 (Ultra, 1080p), or Left 4 Dead (Max, 1440p). The 4K resolution was not yet relevant, but the card managed 2560×1600 in less demanding games.

The Realities of 2025

Modern titles such as Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty or Starfield require at least 4 GB of VRAM and support for DirectX 12, even at low settings in 1080p. The HD 4870 will not only fail to deliver smooth FPS but also won't run many projects due to outdated APIs.

4. Professional Tasks: Unfortunately Irrelevant

Limited Support

The HD 4870 supported OpenCL 1.0, but its computational power (1.2 TFLOPS) seems laughable today, even compared to budget GPUs like the Radeon RX 6400 (up to 4 TFLOPS). It is insufficient for video editing in DaVinci Resolve or 3D modeling in Blender.

Lack of CUDA

For tasks that require CUDA (for example, rendering in OctaneRender), the HD 4870 is useless — this technology remains an NVIDIA exclusive.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Emission

TDP of 150W: Modest for 2008, Wasteful Today

By 2025 standards, the HD 4870 is inefficient. Its TDP (150W) is comparable to modern mid-range GPUs (like the RX 7600 at 165W), but its performance is several times lower.

Cooling and Cases

The stock cooling system for the HD 4870—a single-fan turbine—often overheated under load. In 2025, stable operation will require:

- A case with good ventilation (at least 2 intake fans).

- Replacement of thermal paste and cleaning of the heatsink (if the card is used in a collector's build).

6. Comparison with Competitors

2008: Battle with NVIDIA GTX 260/280

- GTX 260: 10-15% slower in games but with better PhysX support.

- GTX 280: $100 more expensive than the HD 4870 but 20% more powerful.

2025: Budget Alternatives

- Radeon RX 6400 ($150): 3-4 times faster, with FSR 3.0 support, and 4 GB of GDDR6.

- GeForce GTX 1650 ($160): CUDA cores, DLSS, and 4 GB of GDDR5.

7. Practical Advice for Enthusiasts

Power Supply

Even for the HD 4870 in 2025, a 500W power supply (80+ Bronze) is relevant due to peak power consumption.

Compatibility

- Platform: Requires a motherboard with PCIe 2.0 x16. Modern PCIe 4.0/5.0 is backward compatible, but performance won’t improve.

- Drivers: Official support from AMD ended in 2013. For Windows 10/11, modified drivers will have to be used.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Historical significance: the first mass-produced card with GDDR5.

- Outstanding price/performance in 2008-2010.

Cons:

- Does not support DirectX 12, Vulkan, or ray tracing.

- Insufficient VRAM for modern tasks.

- High power consumption relative to performance.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Consider the HD 4870 in 2025?

This graphics card is suitable for:

- Collectors looking to assemble retro PCs.

- Enthusiasts experimenting with 2000s games on original hardware.

- Office tasks, where a display output is needed (but even here, integrated graphics from the Ryzen 5 8600G would be better).

For modern gaming, video editing, or 3D work, the HD 4870 is useless. Its legacy serves as a reminder of how quickly the technological landscape evolves.

Price in 2025: New HD 4870 units are no longer produced. On the secondary market (eBay, retro communities), the price ranges around $30–$50.

If you're looking to indulge in nostalgia or build a PC hardware museum, the HD 4870 is worthy of attention. For everything else, modern solutions are available.

Basic

Label Name

ATI

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

June 2008

Model Name

Radeon HD 4870

Generation

Radeon R700

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

956 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

55 nm

Architecture

TeraScale

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

512MB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

900MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

115.2 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

12.00 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

30.00 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

240.0 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.224 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

800

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

150W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.1

OpenGL

3.3

DirectX

10.1 (10_1)

Power Connectors

2x 6-pin

Shader Model

4.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.224 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon 550X

1.272 +3.9%

FirePro W5000 DVI

1.242 +1.5%

Radeon HD 4870

1.224

GeForce MX330

1.2 -2%

GeForce MX350

1.175 -4%