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Sapphire HD 4870 Toxic Edition
Specifications
Courtesy of Sapphire:
| Die Size | 55 nm |
| Transistor Count | 965 million |
| Onboard Memory | 512 MB |
| Core Frequency | 780 MHz |
| Memory Frequency | 1000 MHz |
| Unified Shader Pipelines | 800 |
| Memory Bus | 265 |
| Memory Type | GDDR5 |
| Data Bus | PCI Express x16 |
| Peak Memory Bandwidth | 115.2 GB/sec |
| External Power Requirements | Two 6-pin |
| DirectX | DX 10.1 SM 4.1 |
| HDTV Compatibility | Yes |
HDMI Modes |
480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p |
| Maximum 3D Resolution | 2560 x 1600 pixels |
Notes About the Specifications
The most important items here are that the GPU is made on a 55nm fabrication process which allows for more transistors and less heat overall. Also note the stock overclock on this card.
| Core | Memory | |
| Stock Settings | 750 MHz | 900 MHz |
| Sapphire 4870 Toxic Edition | 780 MHz | 1000 MHz |
While it’s not a big jump, the technology and the clock speed allow this particular card to have TRIPLE the peak memory bandwidth of a stock clocked 4850. This leads to a huge jump in performance despite the close model numbers.
| GPU/memory | Clock | Peak Bandwith |
| 4850/GDDR3 | 750/900 MHz | 31.7 GB/sec |
| 4870/GDDR5 | 780/1000 MHz | 115.2 GB/sec |
In comparison: Nvidia 260/280 GPUs (stock):
| GPU/Memory | Clock | Bandwidth |
| 260/GDDR3 | 576/999 | 111.9 |
| 280/GDDR3 | 602/1107 | 141.7 |
Features
Sapphire says:
The ATI Radeon HD 4870 Series GPUs deliver a cinematic gaming experience with unprecedented performance. The powerful new TeraScale graphics will propel you deep into your gameplay with seamless frame rates and high resolutions. Enhanced anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering create striking graphics with unparalleled realism so you can max out the settings of the most demanding next-generation games or revitalize your favorite titles. Play today while preparing for tomorrow with tessellation, support for DirectX® 10.1 and scalable ATI CrossFireX™ technology.
| Sapphire's Take | My take |
| TeraScale Graphics Engine The powerful new TeraScale graphics engine features deliver high resolutions and fast frame rates. |
This just means it's a 4800 series card that sports over 1 teraFLOPS of power. FLOPS means FLoting point Operations Per Second. Most graphics calculations are floating point operations. |
| Enhanced Anti-Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering High performance anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features. |
This is the effect that makes your games look realistic, it's also a huge strain on your video card. |
| DirectX 10.1 Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities. |
DirectX 10 is provided with Windows Vista and is the future of gaming. |
| ATI CrossFireX™ Technology ATI CrossFireX™ technology with up to quad GPU support offers superior scalability so your system is ready to level up when you are. |
This card features two CrossFire connectors allowing you to chain up to 4 cards together. |
| PCI Express 2.0 Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications. |
Twice the bandwidth of PCI-E 1.0. If this even matters in the end is anyones guess. |
| Power to Spare This GPU has the brute processing power needed for physics, artificial intelligence, stream computing and ray tracing calculations. |
As mentioned above this GPU can tear through over teraFLOPS worth of calculations. |
| Unified Video Decoder 2 Unified Video Decoder 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for even the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Also, take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities. |
This says it all, it frees up your CPU to do more important tasks. |
| Upscale Beyond 1080p Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond. |
This feature obviously requires a Blu-ray player. |
| On-chip HDCP On-chip HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) makes life easier by allowing you to playback HDCP protected content. |
This feature is in place if you happen to view some content that is HDCP protected. |
| HDMI Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV. |
This allows you to watch HDTV or listen to very high definition audio. |
| ATI PowerPlay™ Technology ATI PowerPlay™ Technology delivers high performance when needed and conserves power when the demand on the graphics processor is low. |
This is similar to AMD's cool n quiet. It's made to save you money because the graphics card is one of the most power hungry components. |
| Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process. |
I'm not sure why you'd care that ATI's power bill is lower, but in case you do they added this. |
Next we're going to take a closer look at this beautiful card.
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