GeForce FX 5600 XT vs ATI Radeon HD 4870

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking713not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.27no data
Power efficiency1.71no data
ArchitectureTeraScale (2005−2013)Rankine (2003−2005)
GPU code nameRV770NV31
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date25 June 2008 (16 years ago)17 March 2003 (21 year ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$299 no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores800no data
Core clock speed750 MHz235 MHz
Number of transistors956 million80 million
Manufacturing process technology55 nm130 nm
Power consumption (TDP)150 Wattno data
Texture fill rate30.000.94
Floating-point processing power1.2 TFLOPSno data
ROPs164
TMUs404

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16AGP 8x
Length250 mmno data
Width2-slot1-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pinNone

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5DDR
Maximum RAM amount1 GB128 MB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed900 MHz200 MHz
Memory bandwidth115.2 GB/s6.4 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x S-Video1x DVI, 1x VGA, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX10.1 (10_1)9.0a
Shader Model4.1no data
OpenGL3.31.5 (2.1)
OpenCL1.1N/A
VulkanN/AN/A

Pros & cons summary


Recency 25 June 2008 17 March 2003
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 128 MB
Chip lithography 55 nm 130 nm

ATI HD 4870 has an age advantage of 5 years, a 700% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 136.4% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce FX 5600 XT. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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ATI Radeon HD 4870
Radeon HD 4870
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 XT
GeForce FX 5600 XT

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


3.3 226 votes

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3.4 28 votes

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Questions & comments

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