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. Click here to read the full story.

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.