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Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

The Radeon HD 5850 comes with clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 143 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 128000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (about 344%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 179800 (344%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 300%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 69600 (300%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 5970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year September 30, 2009 November 2009
Code Name Cypress PRO Hemlock XT
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 725 MHz 725 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 4000 MHz 4000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 151 watts 294 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 256000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 52200 Mtexels/sec 232000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 23200 Mpixels/sec 92800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1440(288x5) 1600 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 72 160 (x2)
Render Output Units 32 64 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2154 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 2.1 x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.2 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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