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Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The Radeon HD 5850 uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a bit (approximately 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870 50400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 1800 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870 28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5600 (24%)

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.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6870

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 6870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year September 30, 2009 October 2010
Code Name Cypress PRO Barts XT
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz 900 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 151 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 52200 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 23200 Mpixels/sec 28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1440(288x5) 1120
Texture Mapping Units 72 56
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2154 million 1700 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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

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.

Comments

5 Responses to “Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 6870”
Advice on replacing my GPU. - Page 2 - HEXUS.community discussion forums says:

[...] reference cards, MSI are very quiet but not amazing for overclocks. The 6870 has just come out - http://www.hwcompare.com/6024/radeon...adeon-hd-6870/ - It's theoretically slightly faster and it is better at tesselation. However - the cheapest I can [...]

Anonymous says:

[...] la 6870 sin lugar a dudas como ves : comparacion 5850 vs 6870/ es un pocomejor y consume mucho menos __________________ cpu:amd thuban x6 [...]

5850 vs 6870x says:

[...] [...]

Vale la pena el cambio de hd 5850 a hd 6870 says:

[...] Re: Vale la pena el cambio de hd 5850 a hd 6870 en efecto, es una subida de un 8% osea no es favorable Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 6870 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare [...]

sadsa says:

tu novia puta con mi pingo se ahoga y vos no desis nada por que sos un toga

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