Mobility Radeon HD 4870 vs Radeon RX 540

In this comparison between Mobility Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon RX 540 you will find out which graphics card performs better in today's games. Bear in mind that third-party versions may have more efficient cooling and higher clock speeds. This will increase cards' performance, though not by much. In addition to raw power you should also take into account the dimensions. Thicker models simply will not fit into a small mini-ITX case. The resolution of your monitor also affects the choice, since 4K gameplay requires a more powerful GPU. And don't overspend on the graphics card. Other parts of your build may also need to be upgraded, save some money for the CPU or power supply. For some people Mobility Radeon HD 4870 will be the best choice, for others Radeon RX 540 will be their preference. Study the comparison tables below and make your choice.

Mobility Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon RX 540 are Laptop Graphics Cards

Note: Mobility Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon RX 540 are only used in laptop graphics. They have lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Mobility Radeon HD 4870 or Radeon RX 540 here:

Main Specs

  Mobility Radeon HD 4870 Radeon RX 540
Power consumption (TDP) 65 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors No outputs
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  • Mobility Radeon HD 4870 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon RX 540 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon RX 540 has 3 GB more memory, than Mobility Radeon HD 4870.
  • Both cards are used in Laptops.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 4870 is build with Terascale 1 architecture, and Radeon RX 540 - with Polaris.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 4870 is manufactured by 55 nm process technology, and Radeon RX 540 - by 14 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon RX 540 is 5112 MHz higher, than Mobility Radeon HD 4870.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 7−8 14−16
ultra / 1080p 4−5 8−9
QHD / 1440p 0−1 3−4
low / 720p 16−18 30−33
medium / 1080p 8−9 18−20
The average gaming FPS of Radeon RX 540 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 100% more, than Mobility Radeon HD 4870.

Full Specs

  Mobility Radeon HD 4870 Radeon RX 540
Architecture Terascale 1 Polaris
Code name M98-XT Polaris 12
Type Laptop Laptop
Release date 9 January 2009 21 March 2017
Pipelines 800 512
Core clock speed 550 MHz
Boost Clock 1219 MHz
Transistor count 956 million 1,500 million
Manufacturing process technology 55 nm 14 nm
Texture fill rate 22.00 39.01
Floating-point performance 880.0 gflops 1,248 gflops
Memory bus width 256 Bit 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 888 MHz 6000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 56.83 GB/s 96 GB/s
Shared memory - -
DirectX 10.1 (10_1) 12.0
Shader Model 4.1 5.0
OpenGL 3.3 4.6
OpenCL 1.1 1.2
Vulkan N/A
FreeSync +
Laptop size large large
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