Radeon R7 M520 vs ATI HD 5870

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking596not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.60no data
Power efficiency2.13no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code nameCypressOland
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date23 September 2009 (15 years ago)18 April 2017 (7 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$399 no data

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 cores1600320
Core clock speed850 MHz1030 MHz
Number of transistors2,154 million1,040 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)188 Watt50 Watt
Texture fill rate68.0020.60
Floating-point processing power2.72 TFLOPSno data
ROPs328
TMUs8020

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 x8
Length282 mmno data
Width2-slot1-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pinNone

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 typeGDDR5DDR3
Maximum RAM amount1 GB2 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit64 Bit
Memory clock speed1200 MHz2000 MHz
Memory bandwidth153.6 GB/s16 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, 1x HDMI, 1x VGA
HDMI++

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.2 (11_0)12.0
Shader Model5.05.0
OpenGL4.44.6
OpenCL1.21.2
VulkanN/A-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 23 September 2009 18 April 2017
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 2 GB
Chip lithography 40 nm 28 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 188 Watt 50 Watt

R7 M520 has an age advantage of 7 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, a 42.9% more advanced lithography process, and 276% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon R7 M520. 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
Radeon HD 5870
AMD Radeon R7 M520
Radeon R7 M520

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Community ratings

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3.9 227 votes

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2.1 16 votes

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Questions & comments

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