ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870
The ATI Mobilty Radeon HD 4870 from AMD is a DirectX 10.1 high end notebook graphics adapter. Technically it is based on the desktop HD 4850/4870 GPUs but with a lower clock rate to save energy. As the desktop HD 4870 it can be equipped with GDDR5 memory.
The gaming performance of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 should be compareable to the desktop HD 4850 (a bit below) and therefore very good. The high amount of shaders and the 256 bit bus allows to run every DirectX 9 game in high resolutions and details. Demanding DirectX 10 games, like Crysis can be played with high details.
The Mobility HD 4870 is based on the RV770 chip and features 800 stream processors (160 5-dimensional shader cores). These cores do the graphic work of the shader- and pixel pipelines of older GPUs. The stream processors are also called ALUs and are grouped in five-way VLIW units. Each of the five instructions of a VLIW bundle has to be independent from the others and therefore the performance depends on the optimization of the driver.
The Mobility Radeon HD 4870 includes the Avivo HD called video technology including an onboard soundchip for 7.1 sound output over HDMI or DisplayPort and the 2nd generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder). This UVD 2 supports full bitstream decoding of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 streams. In addition to this, it also supports dual video stream decoding and Picture-in Picture mode which makes the UVD full BD-Live compliant. Simplified, the Avivo HD technology handles all video tasks and enables the GPU to decode HD videos.
AMD published a current consumtion of about 65 Watt for the HD 4870. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt).
Compared to the desktop ATI Radeon HD 4870, the mobile 4870 features a slower core clock and therfore should perform in the region of the desktop HD 4850 to 4830.
| Manufacturer | ATI |
| Series | Mobility Radeon HD 4000 |
| Codename | M98-XT |
| Pipelines | 800 - unified |
| Core Speed * | 550 MHz |
| Shader Speed * | 550 MHz |
| Memory Speed * | 888 MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 256 Bit |
| Memory Type | GDDR5 |
| Max. Amount of Memory | 1024 MB |
| Shared Memory | no |
| DirectX | DirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1 |
| Transistors | 956 Million |
| technology | 55 nm |
| Features | OpenGL 2.0, PCI-E 2.0 x16, Powerplay, DisplayPort support up to 2560x1600, HDMI support up to 1920x1080 (both with 7.1 AC3 Audio), 1x Dual-Link/Single-Link DVI, 1x Single-Link DVI Support (all display ports have to be supported by the laptop manufacturer) |
| Notebook Size | large |
| Date of Announcement | 09.01.2009 |
| Link to Manufacturer Page | http://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityrade... |
benchmarks
3DMark 05: - Standard 1024x768
0% 
100%
min: 14594, avg: 14594, max: 14594 Points ... More Details
3DMark 06:
0% 100%
min: 10183, avg: 10183, max: 10183 Points ... More Details
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics cardBased on 2 benchmarks
| 3DMark 05 in comparison | ||
| Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 500 (min) | 137 | |
| ... | ||
| NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M | 14224 | |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M | 14426 | |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M SLI | 14510 | |
| ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 | 14594 | |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M | 14742 | |
| NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GT | 14869 | |
| ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 | 14938 | |
| ... | ||
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M SLI (max) | 19268 | |
Game Benchmarks
For more games that might be playable and a list of all games and graphics cards visit our Gaming List
Benchmarks by AMD
AMD published some relative benchmarks of the new HD 4870 in relation to the old HD 3870. The benchmarks were conducted in 1920x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF.
- Relative performance of the HD 4870 to the HD 3870 conducted with a desktop Phenom x4 9950 in 1920x1200 4xAA, 8xAF
:: No reviews found for this graphics card.
