ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition vs GeForce 9800 GT

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking1037not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.04no data
Power efficiency0.69no data
ArchitectureTesla (2006−2010)TeraScale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code nameG92Cypress
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date21 July 2008 (16 years ago)30 June 2010 (14 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$160 $479

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 cores1121600
Core clock speed600 MHz850 MHz
Number of transistors754 million2,154 million
Manufacturing process technology65 nm40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)105 Watt228 Watt
Maximum GPU temperature105 °Cno data
Texture fill rate33.6068.00
Floating-point processing power0.336 TFLOPS2.72 TFLOPS
ROPs1632
TMUs5680

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 x16PCIe 2.0 x16
Length229 mm279 mm
Height1-slotno data
Width1-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin2x 6-pin
SLI options+-

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 typeGDDR3GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount1 GB1 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit256 Bit
Memory clock speed900 MHz1195 MHz
Memory bandwidth57.6 GB/s153.0 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 ConnectorsHDTVDual Link DVI1x DVI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Multi monitor support+no data
Maximum VGA resolution2048x1536no data
Audio input for HDMIS/PDIFno data

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.1 (10_0)11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model4.05.0
OpenGL2.14.4
OpenCL1.11.2
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA+-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 21 July 2008 30 June 2010
Chip lithography 65 nm 40 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 105 Watt 228 Watt

9800 GT has 117.1% lower power consumption.

ATI HD 5870 Mac Edition, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 1 year, and a 62.5% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between GeForce 9800 GT and Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition. 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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NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
GeForce 9800 GT
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition
Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

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Community ratings

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3.3 1429 votes

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2.3 9 votes

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Questions & comments

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