Radeon HD 7950 Monica BIOS 2 vs ATI HD 5870 Mac Edition

Primary details

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

Place in the rankingnot ratednot rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code nameCypressTahiti
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date30 June 2010 (14 years ago)31 January 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$479 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 cores1600768
Core clock speed850 MHz800 MHz
Number of transistors2,154 million4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)228 Watt85 Watt
Texture fill rate68.0038.40
Floating-point processing power2.72 TFLOPS1.229 TFLOPS
ROPs3232
TMUs8048

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 3.0 x16
Length279 mm267 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin1x 6-pin + 1x 8-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 GB3 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit384 Bit
Memory clock speed1195 MHz1250 MHz
Memory bandwidth153.0 GB/s240.0 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 Connectors1x DVI, 2x mini-DisplayPort1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
HDMI-+

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.2 (11_0)12 (11_1)
Shader Model5.05.1
OpenGL4.44.6
OpenCL1.21.2
VulkanN/A1.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 30 June 2010 31 January 2012
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 3 GB
Chip lithography 40 nm 28 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 228 Watt 85 Watt

HD 7950 Monica BIOS 2 has an age advantage of 1 year, a 200% higher maximum VRAM amount, a 42.9% more advanced lithography process, and 168.2% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition and Radeon HD 7950 Monica BIOS 2. 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 5870 Mac Edition
Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition
AMD Radeon HD 7950 Monica BIOS 2
Radeon HD 7950 Monica BIOS 2

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