Enthusiast segment
Gaming segment
Budget segment
by Sergey Lepilov
09/18/2009 | 12:34 PM
In just a few days AMD/ATI will officially launch the new RV870 graphics processor and first graphics accelerators based on it. Numerous reviews and benchmarks will start flowing into the web, and new fan wars will break out in many hardware forums. Before we move on to our reviews of ATI Radeon HD 5870/5850 graphics solutions, we decided to cross all t’s in the still current fourth graphics card series by offering you a brief review and in-depth test session of the most interesting graphics cards from this series. Our today’s goal is fairly simple: we are going to compare the performance gain on transition from a less expensive solution to a more expensive one against their price difference and try to determine the economical justification for paying extra. Therefore, we would like to start with the analysis of the recommended graphics card prices and their marketing positioning.
According to ATI’s official presentation, 4xxx graphics cards are positioned in three major segments, five Radeon HD 4xxx cards in each:
Enthusiast segment | Gaming segment |
Budget segment | |
If we remove all old Radeon HD 3xxx graphics cards from these segments and sum up all average prices and cards on a single chart, we will get the following picture:
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The gray rows mark the graphics cards that we do not consider current anymore. The first two – Radeon HD 4350 and HD 4550 – are of no interest even for those who play games rarely, not to mention the real gaming fans. Radeon HD 4830 has already been discontinued and is almost impossible to find anywhere in retail, because it has been replaced with a cheaper, more energy-efficient and actually faster Radeon HD 4770. And the last “gray” graphics card – Radeon HD 4850 X2 – has become so rare, I would even say exclusive, that we don’t think it makes any sense to include it into our today’s test session.
So, we are left with eight graphics cards from Radeon HD 4xxx series, which we are going to test today. But before we start the session, let’s check out their specifications real quick:
Click to enlarge
All graphics accelerators were provided to us in OEM packaging and without any accessories or cables.
The first card we would like to introduce to you is a Radeon HD 4650 solution from PowerColor with 512 MB of video memory onboard. Compact and almost weightless graphics card is built on red PCB and is equipped with a small aluminum heatsink with a fan:
RV730Pro graphics processor manufactured with 55 nm process is only 145 mm2 big and its specifications are exactly the same as we pointed out in the table above.
The graphics card is equipped with four DDR2 memory chips by Qimonda marked as HYB18T512161CF-20 with 2.0 ns nominal access time and 1000 MHz theoretical effective frequency. Nevertheless, video memory on this graphics card works at 800 MHz, which is 200 MHz lower than the specifications claim for Radeon HD 4650. Therefore, to ensure fair results during our test session we increased the memory frequency to 1000 MHz. The card uses a 128 bit memory bus.
The screenshot below sums up the specifications of PowerColor Radeon HD 4650 512 MB:
This card doesn’t require additional power supply, because its power consumption doesn’t exceed 55 W. The cooler is very quiet, but you can still distinguish its noise against the background of a quiet system case.
The next graphics card – Radeon HD 4670 512 MB – was also a PowerColor solution. The same red PCB and small size. However, we see a different cooler this time: a larger heatsink with a bigger fan:
RV730XT graphics processor has the same structure as the one in Radeon HD 4650: 320 universal shader processors, 32 texturing units and 8 raster units. However, its frequency is a little higher: 750 MHz instead of 600 MHz, according to HD 4670 specifications.
Unlike Radeon HD 4650, HD 4670 uses GDDR3 memory chips with higher operational frequency than DDR3. The effective memory frequency is 1746 MHz (the same as in the specifications). These memory chips are made by Hynix and marked as H5TS5163MFR
Here are the full graphics card specifications:
The power consumption of this solution shouldn’t exceed 70 W that is why Radeon HD 4670 doesn’t have an additional power supply connector. The graphics card cooling system is the quietest of all our today’s testing participants and provides very modest thermal range of no more than 60 °C on the chip under peak load.
Radeon HD 4730 graphics card will be represented by a Sapphire product. This card is not mentioned in the official AMD presentation; however, you can easily buy this solution today at a very attractive price point. Sapphire’s implementation of this graphics card looks very unusual for ATI solutions, because it is based on a blue PCB:
It uses the design of Radeon HD 4850 PCB and an RV770 (55 nm) graphics processor with 160 disabled universal processors (only 640 processors left). These processors work at 750 MHz frequency. There are only 32 texturing units out of initially available 40, and only half of raster units – a total of 8.
They also halved the bus between the GPU and the memory, which now is only 128 bit wide. 512 MB of GDDR5 video memory by Qimonda (IDGV51-05A1F1C-40X marking) work at 3600 MHz effective frequency.
GPU-Z utility didn’t quite recognize this graphics card, having reported the non-existing HD 4810:
The graphics card cooling system consists of an aluminum heatsink and a 92 mm fan. It turned out pretty efficient and didn’t let the GPU temperature rise beyond 70 °C. However, there is one negative thing to it: high level of generated noise. I have to add that the graphics card requires two additional six-pin power cables connected to it at all times.
Radeon HD 4770 512 MB graphics card will be represented by a reference AMD solution:
It is based on RV740 graphics processor manufactured with 40 nm process and working at 750 MHz frequency. The GPU configuration includes 640 processors, 32 texturing units and 8 raster units (ROPs).
The card is equipped with 512 MB of Qimonda video memory with the same exact marking ass the above described Sapphire card. Here are the complete specifications according to GPU-Z:
Radeon HD 4770 power consumption shouldn’t exceed 75 W, but the card is still equipped with an additional power supply connector. The cooler with a PWM-controlled fan is pretty quiet at work.
The fifth graphics card in our today’s test session was provided to us by Gigabyte. Radeon HD 4850 512 MB (GV-R485OC-1GH) is built according to the reference design but features a Zalman cooler with two heatpipes:
The card is built around a fully-fledged RV770Pro (55 nm) graphics processor without any limitations or any disabled units. The GPU frequency has been increased quite substantially above the nominal for Radeon HD 4850 (625 MHz) and equals 700 MHz.
The 512 MB of onboard video memory come from Samsung (the chips marking reads K4J10324QD-HJ1A). Video memory works at 1986 MHz effective frequency, which is exactly according to the graphics card specifications.
Just like on all other cards, we adjusted the working frequencies of our Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 512 MB (GV-R485OC-1GH) to match the reference values during our test session:
This card consumes no more than 110 W. the cooler is unfortunately quite noisy and works at a constant speed (around 2200-2500 RPM).
The next graphics card is a reference solution manufactured under MSI brand name. It is Radeon HD 4870 512 MB:
The card uses RV770 GPU, but its clock frequency should be 750 MHz unlike that of the Radeon HD 4850. However, on MSI graphics card it has been increased to 800 MHz. The graphics processor has 800 unified shader processors, 40 texturing units and 16 raster units.
Video memory chips used on this graphics accelerator are exactly the same as the ones used on Sapphire Radeon HD 4730 or reference Radeon HD 4770. However, their effective frequency is not 3600 MHz as the Radeon HD 4870 specifications claim, and even not 4000 MHz as we could assume judging by the nominal access time of Qimonda chips (with IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X marking), but 4400 MHz, which is even higher than that of Radeon HD 4890 video memory!
We brought the working frequencies of MSI Radeon HD 4870 to the reference values and in this case MSI solution consumed 170 W of power. Therefore, it is equipped with two additional six-pin power connectors. The reference cooler of this card generates the same extremely high noise as on other Radeon HD 4870 solutions.
Our regular readers are already familiar with this Diamond Multimedia solution from an earlier review that is why I will only provide a graphics card shot here:
… and a photo of its GPU and video memory chips:
The specifications are the following:
The last eight graphics card participating in our today’s test session is yet another MSI product:
Radeon HD 4870 X2 is based on two RV770 graphics processors working at 780 MHz frequency, which is 30 MHz higher than the reference card speed:
The memory chips are the same: Qimonda GDDR5 working at the default frequency for Radeon HD 4870 X2 of 3600 MHz:
The final screenshot sums up the graphics card specifications:
The declared power consumption is 286 W. Therefore, the card is equipped with eight- and six-pin power connectors. The cooling system generates tolerable noise only until the fan speeds up by 30-35%, which is never really the case in 3D mode.
First, let me say a few words about the hardware that we used during this test session. All graphics cards were benchmarked in a closed system case with the following configuration:
To minimize the platform influence on the performance of the tested graphics cards I overclocked our 45 nm quad-core CPU with the multiplier set at 21x and “Load-Line Calibration” enabled to 4.01GHz. The processor Vcore was increased to 1.36875V in the mainboard BIOS:
The system memory worked at 1527MHz frequency with 7-7-7-14_1T timings and 1.62V voltage:
All other parameters available in the mainboard BIOS and connected with CPU or memory overclocking remained unchanged (set to Auto).
Now let’s move on to software and benchmarking tools that we used. All tests were performed under Windows 7 x64 RTM with the following drivers:
The graphics cards were tested in three resolutions: 1280x1024, widescreen 1680x1050 and1920x1200. The tests were performed in two image quality modes: “High Quality” without any image quality enhancements and “HQ+ AF16x+AA4/8x” with enabled 16x anisotropic filtering and 4x full screen anti-aliasing (or 8x FSAA if the average framerate was high enough for comfortable gaming experience). We enabled anisotropic filtering and full-screen anti-aliasing from the game settings. If there corresponding options were missing, we changed these settings in the Catalyst Control Panel. Vertical sync was always off (in CCC).
All games were reinstalled fresh under the new operating system and updated with the latest patches available at the time of tests. So, the complete list of test applications includes the two popular synthetic benchmarks and 14 games of various genres:
Here I’d like to add that if the game allowed recording the minimal fps readings, they were also added to the charts. We ran each game test or benchmark twice and took the best result for the diagrams, but only if the difference between them didn’t exceed 1%. If it did exceed 1%, we ran the tests at least one more time to achieve repeatability of results.
Now let’s talk about the actual benchmarks.
The graphics cards are ranked in the diagrams in the order of ascending recommended price. Radeon HD 46xx series is marked orange, HD 47xx series – green, HD 48xx series – blue and dual-processor HD 4870 X2 – red. We would like to start with the results obtained in synthetic benchmarks.
The results in both synthetic benchmarks lined up the graphics cards according to their prices. The performance gain in 3DMark 2006 is almost linear, while a more demanding 3DMark Vantage we clearly see the slowest cards falling behind.
The results in World in Conflict are very similar to what we have just seen in synthetic benchmarks. There is nothing unexpected about them, so let’s move on to the next test.
Radeon HD 4770 managed to outperform a more expensive Radeon HD 4850 in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars game in test modes without any image quality enhancements. It must be due to high GPU frequency of the HD 4770 solution. However, once the load increases, wider memory bus starts to matter more, and HD 4850 has twice the bus width of HD 4770. This is where the defeat of HD 4770 in quality gaming modes and in high screen resolutions comes from. Other than that, we didn’t notice anything extraordinary in this game.
The results in Unreal Tournament 3 turned out pretty interesting. We don’t see anything new in the test modes without any graphics quality enhancements. However, when we enable FSAA and AF in resolutions over 1280x1024 the amount of onboard video memory begins to have its effect on performance. The reference point here is Radeon HD 4870 512 MB. At first it falls just a little bit behind Radeon HD 4890 1024 MB, but as the workload increases and the system demands more from the video memory the difference in performance of these two graphics accelerators more than doubles. No doubt that the performance of all other testing participants stumbled upon the insufficient amount of video memory.
We can point out two things about the results in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky: extremely low performance demonstrated by Radeon HD 4650 (even compared with the closest runner - Radeon HD 4670) and excellent results demonstrated by the dual-GPU Radeon HD 4870 X2, which proved almost twice as fast a single-processor Radeon HD 4870. All other solutions lined up according to their increasing price and performance.
The results obtained in Crysis confirm the general tendency.
Radeon HD 4770 and Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards compete successfully in Far Cry 2 game in the “light” quality mode. As soon as we enable graphics quality enhancements, HD 4850 takes the lead in this race, even though its fps rate is still low. The additional 512 MB of video memory on Radeon HD 4890 start to pay off, which you can clearly see from the results comparison against HD 4870. And the dual-processor Radeon HD 4870 X2 is probably the only graphics card in our today’s test session that can provide comfortable framerate in any resolution and with any image quality settings.
Not very resource-hungry game according to today’s standards, Left 4 Dead, allows even the owners of inexpensive Radeon HD 4730 to play comfortably and the power of Radeon HD 4870 X2 is absolutely unnecessary here. The performance differences between the cards are quite comparable with their price differences.
Lost Planet: Colonies is another game where Radeon HD 4770 can compete successfully against Radeon HD 4850. I also have to point out very sad results demonstrated by Radeon HD 46xx and excellent work of a CrossFireX configuration represented by Radeon HD 4870 X2.
There are three strongly pronounced stages in the results obtained in this game: two Radeon HD 46xx cards with step-by-step frames display, then HD 47xx and HD 4850 cards with slightly better results but still comparatively low fps rate, and Radeon HD 4870/4890 with more or less acceptable framerate. Dual-processor Radeon HD 4870 X2 stands out and is practically the only graphics card that could satisfy the needs of Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason fans.
In Call of Duty 5 we could only point out that Radeon HD 4770 and HD 4850 demonstrated very close results. Other than that, the situation in this game is quite the same.
Things are exactly the same in Stormrise game.
The results in Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. game are also within the same general picture.
We wish we could see excellent scalability by Radeon HD 4870 X2 in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Too bad that the game doesn’t support FSAA: the load its engine creates is not too heavy for contemporary graphics accelerators, although the image quality is impeccable.
In Resident Evil 5 the results once again confirm the graphics cards lineup according to their performance we have seen before.
Let’s get back to the very first diagram of our today’s article but without the graphics cards that didn’t participate in our today’s test session:
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Now let’s calculate the recommended retail price of the tested graphics cards in percentage, where 100% is the price of the fastest solution – Radeon HD 4890:
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If it is not quite clear, let me explain that according to this diagram Radeon HD 4870 costs 29% less than Radeon HD 4890, and the price of the latter is 88% lower than the price of the dual-processor Radeon HD 4870 X2.
And now let’s find the average performance ratio between all graphics cards according to their AVG FPS in all gaming tests (you can take a look at the complete results table here) in two quality modes. After that we will compare the percentage differences from the first diagram with what we have here:
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So what do we see? For example, we see that Radeon HD 4650 and 4670 cost 77% and 78% cheaper than Radeon HD 4890 and their performance is 73-76% and 75-80% lower depending on the image quality mode. After comparison against Radeon HD 4890 price and performance, the best choices in terms of price-to-performance ratio will be Radeon HD 4770 and Radeon HD 4870, because the performance difference between them and the HD 4890 card is smaller than the price difference. However, Radeon HD 4870 X2 can hardly be considered a good purchase, even despite the impressive performance advantage over Radeon HD 4890, because it is almost twice as expensive as the HD 4890, but provides only 50% performance improvement compared with the latter.
Before we move on to the conclusions, let’s check the power consumption of systems with different ATI Radeon HD 4xxx graphics cards. The measurements were performed with the help of a specially modified power supply unit in two modes: under load created by FurMark 1.7.0 in stability test mode and 1280x1024 resolution, and under load created by both FurMark and LinPack x64 (LinX 0.6.3, 3072 MB, 7 threads). The first test mode will allow us to determine the power consumption of the system in VGA burn mode, while the second test mode will show peak power consumption of the entire system. The results are given on the diagram below:
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Only Radeon HD 4730 stands out, because for some reason it consumes in FurMark test even more than Radeon HD 4850, although under combination load the power consumption of both these systems is about the same. Moreover, I would like to point out Radeon HD 4890, which power consumption is just a little higher than that of a system with Radeon HD 4870, even though the former works at considerably higher clock speeds.
In fact, we can say that the recommended price of graphics cards on ATI Radeon HD 4xxx series processors correlates very well with their performance. In other words, we have every reason to conclude that the company’s marketing specialists were working closely with the engineers that is why we don’t see any obvious miscalculations within the lineup. At the same time we can point out a few most interesting graphics card models from the ones tested today.
The first one that deserves a special word is Radeon HD 4770 512 MB, which in my opinion is the necessary minimum requirement for more or less contemporary games. The performance if inexpensive Radeon HD 4650 and 4670 is so low that these graphics accelerators simply can’t provide the gamers with acceptable framerate even in low image quality modes and screen resolutions. After our today’s test session we have absolutely no regrets that we didn’t include Radeon HD 4350 and HD 4550 (their tests would be completed by Radeon HD 58xx launch at best). Radeon HD 4370 seems to be really close to Radeon HD 4770 in performance, but it is less energy-efficient, requires additional power supply, has higher heat dissipation and generates more noise. Moreover, it is simply bigger in size. Radeon HD 4770, on the contrary, is a quiet and economical graphics solution with acceptable performance, which is often comparable even with that of Radeon HD 4850. Its heat dissipation is also quite modest due to the use of 40 nm GPU.
The second graphics card from the old cavalry that we can recommend is Radeon HD 4890 1024 MB, which is in fact none other but further enhancement of the Radeon HD 4870 with higher clock frequencies, almost the same heat dissipation and noise levels, and the same power consumption, but with twice as much memory. Yes, their prices differ dramatically that is why I am sure that you will make the final decision yourselves. As an option, you can consider getting a Radeon HD 4870 with 1 GB of memory and the price point somewhere between HD 4870 512 MB and HD 4890. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a graphics card like that at my disposal at the time of tests that is why we can’t draw any conclusions about the price difference.
Finally, uncompromising and wealthy gamers should go for the dual-processor Radeon HD 4870 X2. And if the new single-processor Radeon HD 5870 graphics card that launches in a few days turns out faster, more energy-efficient and quieter than the today’s ATI flagship solution, it will really become a significant step forward for AMD/ATI and definitely a stimulus for the other company to release even more powerful solutions. I am pretty sure you know who will benefit most in this case :)