ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition vs ATI HD 5850

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking619not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.64no data
Power efficiency2.38no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)TeraScale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code nameCypressCypress
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date30 September 2009 (15 years ago)30 June 2010 (14 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$299 $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 cores14401600
Core clock speed725 MHz850 MHz
Number of transistors2,154 million2,154 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)151 Watt228 Watt
Texture fill rate52.2068.00
Floating-point processing power2.088 TFLOPS2.72 TFLOPS
ROPs3232
TMUs7280

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
Length241 mm279 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin2x 6-pin

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 typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount1 GB1 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit256 Bit
Memory clock speed1000 MHz1195 MHz
Memory bandwidth128.0 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 Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort1x DVI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
HDMI+-

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.2 (11_0)11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model5.05.0
OpenGL4.44.4
OpenCL1.21.2
VulkanN/AN/A

Pros & cons summary


Recency 30 September 2009 30 June 2010
Power consumption (TDP) 151 Watt 228 Watt

ATI HD 5850 has 51% lower power consumption.

ATI HD 5870 Mac Edition, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 9 months.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 5850 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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ATI Radeon HD 5850
Radeon HD 5850
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition
Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

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Community ratings

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3.5 253 votes

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2.3 9 votes

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Questions & comments

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