Gigabyte’s Radeon HD 4650: Are AGP Graphics Still Good Enough?
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Ah, the Accelerated Graphics Port. I remember when AGP first arrived, touted as the PC gamer’s savior.
Prior to 1997, a PC’s graphics card was limited to a measly 133 MB/s of bandwidth. Then came the AGP slot with 266 MB/s, followed by AGP 2x with 533 MB/s, AGP 4x with 1,066 MB/s, and finally AGP 8x with 2,133 MB/s of potential bandwidth. That kind of throughput is respectable, even by today’s standards.
Right out of the gate, a first-gen PCI Express (PCIe) x16 slot, with its 4,000 MB/s of bandwidth, didn’t show any appreciable gains over AGP 8x because even the fastest graphics cards didn’t saturate the AGP bus. Regardless, AGP was inevitably dropped in favor of the more scalable point-to-point PCIe standard. PCIe not only offered increased throughput, but it also brought with it the ability to transfer more power to ever-hungrier graphics cards.
By PC technology standards, all of this is ancient history. So why bring it up? Ask Gigabyte, one of the few manufacturers that sought to grace the aging AGP bus with a modern graphics processor, designed to save nostalgic gamers from buying a new CPU, motherboard, and graphics subsystem in making the jump to PCIe-based platforms. Its technical designation is the Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI, but you’ll probably know it better by its street name, ATI’s Radeon HD 4650.
The Radeon HD 3850 AGP, 4650 AGP, and 4650 PCIe
This is an interesting move on Gigabyte’s part, as the Radeon HD 4650 isn’t really any faster than the previous king-of-AGP, the Radeon HD 3850. In fact, the older Radeon HD 3850 is probably faster, since it sports a wide 256-bit memory bus (compared to the 4650’s 128-bit bus) and fast DDR3 memory (compared to the 4650’s DDR2 memory). Still, the Radeon HD 4650 does have a few things going for it compared to the Radeon HD 3850, such as more conservative power requirements and two times the texture units.
Who Buys This Stuff?
Sounds great, but who’s interested in upgrading ancient tech? Well, 57% of the participants in Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey game with dual-core CPUs, while 26% use single-core machines. The most common memory capacity is 2 GB, and the majority of users with processors from AMD game on machines that have clock speeds between 2 and 2.29 GHz. Now, we don’t have any specific information about the CPU models folks use, but it’s a safe bet that there are a lot of people out there running older rigs.
And who wouldn’t want to get more longevity out of an old box? Whether it’s your primary gaming machine or just an old PC you keep in the basement, it’d sure be nice to play the newest titles on aged equipment. In fact, I can personally vouch that it’s useful to have a spare PC around so a visitor can join in a rousing game of Left 4 Dead. So let’s find out if this new Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI can breathe some life into one of the great gaming CPUs of antiquity, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+.
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AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM vs ATI Radeon HD 4650
Comparative analysis of AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM and ATI Radeon HD 4650 videocards for all known characteristics in the following categories: Essentials, Technical info, Video outputs and ports, Compatibility, dimensions and requirements, API support, Memory.
Benchmark videocards performance analysis: PassMark — G3D Mark, PassMark — G2D Mark, Geekbench — OpenCL, CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Face Detection (mPixels/s), CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Ocean Surface Simulation (Frames/s), CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — T-Rex (Frames/s), CompuBench 1.
5 Desktop — Video Composition (Frames/s), CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Bitcoin Mining (mHash/s), GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Frames), GFXBench 4.0 — Manhattan (Frames), GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Frames), GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Fps), GFXBench 4.0 — Manhattan (Fps), GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Fps).
AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM
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vs
ATI Radeon HD 4650
Buy on Amazon
Differences
Reasons to consider the AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM
- Videocard is newer: launch date 4 year(s) 10 month(s) later
- Around 46% higher core clock speed: 875 MHz vs 600 MHz
- A newer manufacturing process allows for a more powerful, yet cooler running videocard: 40 nm vs 55 nm
- Around 37% lower typical power consumption: 35 Watt vs 48 Watt
- 4x more maximum memory size: 1 GB vs 256 MB
- Around 29% higher memory clock speed: 1800 MHz vs 1400 MHz
- Around 21% better performance in PassMark — G3D Mark: 263 vs 218
- 5.
1x better performance in PassMark — G2D Mark: 173 vs 34 - Around 11% better performance in GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Frames): 2093 vs 1891
- Around 11% better performance in GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Fps): 2093 vs 1891
| Launch date | 23 July 2013 vs 10 September 2008 |
| Core clock speed | 875 MHz vs 600 MHz |
| Manufacturing process technology | 40 nm vs 55 nm |
| Thermal Design Power (TDP) | 35 Watt vs 48 Watt |
| Maximum memory size | 1 GB vs 256 MB |
| Memory clock speed | 1800 MHz vs 1400 MHz |
| PassMark — G3D Mark | 263 vs 218 |
| PassMark — G2D Mark | 173 vs 34 |
GFXBench 4. 0 — T-Rex (Frames) |
2093 vs 1891 |
| GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Fps) | 2093 vs 1891 |
Reasons to consider the ATI Radeon HD 4650
- 2.7x more texture fill rate: 19.2 GTexel / s vs 7 GTexel / s
- 2x more pipelines: 320 vs 160
- Around 37% better floating-point performance: 384.0 gflops vs 280.0 gflops
| Texture fill rate | 19.2 GTexel / s vs 7 GTexel / s |
| Pipelines | 320 vs 160 |
| Floating-point performance | 384.0 gflops vs 280.0 gflops |
Compare benchmarks
GPU 1: AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM
GPU 2: ATI Radeon HD 4650
| PassMark — G3D Mark |
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| PassMark — G2D Mark |
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GFXBench 4. 0 — T-Rex (Frames) |
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| GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Fps) |
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| Name | AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM | ATI Radeon HD 4650 |
|---|---|---|
| PassMark — G3D Mark | 263 | 218 |
| PassMark — G2D Mark | 173 | 34 |
| Geekbench — OpenCL | 869 | |
CompuBench 1. 5 Desktop — Face Detection (mPixels/s) |
1.988 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Ocean Surface Simulation (Frames/s) | 104.327 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — T-Rex (Frames/s) | 0.239 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Video Composition (Frames/s) | 5.628 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Bitcoin Mining (mHash/s) | 23.365 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Frames) | 672 | |
GFXBench 4. 0 — Manhattan (Frames) |
1078 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Frames) | 2093 | 1891 |
| GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Fps) | 672 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — Manhattan (Fps) | 1078 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Fps) | 2093 | 1891 |
Compare specifications (specs)
| AMD Radeon HD 8490 OEM | ATI Radeon HD 4650 | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | TeraScale 2 | TeraScale |
| Code name | Caicos | RV730 |
| Launch date | 23 July 2013 | 10 September 2008 |
| Place in performance rating | 1414 | 1466 |
| Type | Desktop | Desktop |
| Core clock speed | 875 MHz | 600 MHz |
| Floating-point performance | 280. 0 gflops |
384.0 gflops |
| Manufacturing process technology | 40 nm | 55 nm |
| Pipelines | 160 | 320 |
| Texture fill rate | 7 GTexel / s | 19.2 GTexel / s |
| Thermal Design Power (TDP) | 35 Watt | 48 Watt |
| Transistor count | 370 million | 514 million |
| Display Connectors | 1x DVI, 1x DisplayPort | 2x DVI, 1x S-Video |
| Interface | PCIe 2.
|