ATI Radeon HD 4870
About GPU
The ATI Radeon HD 4870 is a desktop GPU with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. It has a memory clock of 900MHz, 800 shading units, and a 256KB L2 cache. With a TDP of 150W and theoretical performance of 1.2 TFLOPS, this GPU offers impressive performance for its time.
When it was released, the Radeon HD 4870 was praised for its high-performance capabilities, especially when it came to gaming. It offered smooth and seamless gameplay, even on the most demanding titles. The 512MB of GDDR5 memory contributed to its ability to handle high-resolution textures and complex graphics with ease.
The 900MHz memory clock speed ensured quick access to the GPU's memory, resulting in fast and responsive performance. The 800 shading units allowed for complex and realistic lighting and shadow effects in games and other graphics-intensive applications.
The 256KB L2 cache helped reduce memory latency, further improving the GPU's overall performance. Its TDP of 150W meant that it consumed a moderate amount of power for the level of performance it delivered.
Overall, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 was a solid choice for gamers and graphics professionals alike at the time of its release. Its high-performance capabilities, efficient memory system, and moderate power consumption made it a popular option for those seeking a reliable GPU for their desktop systems.
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
10
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.
40
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.
16
Suggested PSU
450W
Benchmarks
FP32 (float)
Score
1.224
TFLOPS
Compared to Other GPU
FP32 (float)
/ TFLOPS