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Radeon HD 5850 reviewed: The DirectX 11 bargain

Is the Radeon HD 5850 able to live up the hype as a DX11 bargain graphics card in our review? Have a look at our testing.

Ati Radeon HD 5850 reviewed [Source: view picture gallery]

Although the Radeon HD 5850 had been launched together with the HD 5870 (see Radeon HD 5870 reviewed) last week, both cards are not available yet. According to AMD this is coning to change soon. PC Games Hardware received two samples of the Radeon HD 5850 and put the cards to the test.

Radeon HD 5850: Specifications
The Radeon HD 5850 is a full DirectX 11 card, but in difference to the bigger HD 5870 it has a lower calculation power: While the HD 5870 has 1600 Shader units and 80 texture units, the HD 5850 is shipped with 1440 respectively 72 of those units. Besides that the frequencies have been set to 725/2000 MHz (HD 5870: 800/2400 MHz).

Hersteller	AMD Radeon						Nvidia Geforce
	HD 5870	HD 5850	HD 4870 X2*	HD 4890	HD 4870	HD 4850	GTX 295*	GTX 285	GTX 275	GTX 260-216
Chip	Cypress (RV870)	Cypress (RV870)	2 x RV770	RV790	RV770	RV770	2 x GT200b	GT200b	GT200b	GT200(b)
Version (DirectX / Shader)	11 / 5.0	11 / 5.0	10.1 / 4.1	10.1 / 4.1	10.1 / 4.1	10.1 / 4.1	10.0 / 4.0	10.0 / 4.0	10.0 / 4.0	10.0 / 4.0
Process tech (Nanometer)	40	40	55	55	55	55	55	55	55	65/55
Transistors (Mio.)	2150	2150	2 x 965	965	965	965	2 x 1.400	1400	1400	1400
Engine clock (MHz)	850	725	750	850	750	625	576	648	633	576
Shader clock (MHz)	850	725	750	850	750	625	1242	1476	1404	1242
VRAM clock (MHz)	2400**	2000**	1800**	1950**	1800**	993	999	1242	1134	999
Numbers
Shader-ALUs	1600	1440	2 x 800	800	800	800	2 x 240	240	240	216
Texture Units	80	72	2 x 40	40	40	40	2 x 80	80	80	72
Quad-ROPs / -Render-Backends	32	32	2 x 16	16	16	16	2 x 28	32	28	28
VRAM (MiByte)	1024	1024	2 x 1.024	1024	512-1.024	512-1.024	2 x 896	1024	896	896
Bus width (Bit)	256	256	2 x 256	256	256	256	2 x 448	512	448	448
VRAM type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3
Performance-Peaks
GFLOP/s (Single-Prec. MADD)	2720	2088	2 x 1.200	1360	1200	1000	2 x 596,2	709	674	537
Texel-Fillrate (MTex/sec.)	68000	52200	2 x 30.000	34000	30000	25000	2 x 46080	51840	50640	41472
Pixel-Fillrate (MPix/sec.)	27200	23200	2 x 12.000	13600	12000	10000	2 x 16128	20736	17224	16128
Peak Bandwidth (GiByte/sec.)	153,6	128,0	2 x 115,2	124,8	115,2	64,0	2 x 111,9	158,9	127,0	111,9
Misc.
Anti-Aliasing, best	8x SGSSAA, 24x CFAA	8x SGSSAA, 24x CFAA	24x CFAA	24x CFAA	24x CFAA	24x CFAA	16xQ CSAA	16xQ CSAA	16xQ CSAA	16xQ CSAA
Multi-Sampling, max.	8x	8x	8x	8x	8x	8x	8x	8x	8x	8x
Multi-GPU (Crossfire X / SLI	up to 4 cards	up to 4 cards	up to 2 cards	up to 4 cards	up to 4 cards	up to 4 cards	up to 2 cards	up to 3 cards	up to 3 cards	up to 3 cards
PCI-E.-Connectors (6-Pin/8-Pin)	2 x / 0 x	2 x / 0 x	1 x / 1 x**	2 x / 0 x	2 x / 0 x	1 x / 0 x	1 x / 1 x**	2 x / 0 x	2 x / 0 x	2 x / 0 x
Length of card (approx., mm)	282	???	267	241	241	234	270	267	267	267

* Single values don't necessarily doubled with a multi GPU setup.
** Value represent sum of both Write-Clocks of GDDR5
*** 8-Pin connector required

Picture gallery

(enlarge to view source)

Index

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Introduction and Specs

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Board, Cooling and Voltage supply

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Power consumption, Loudness and Cooling

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Overclocking

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Test system and Benchmark selection

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Call of Duty: World at War (dt., DX9)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Crysis Warhead (DX10/64 Bit)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Fallout 3 + HD-Pack (DX9)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Far Cry 2 (DX10)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Grand Theft Auto 4

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Half Life 2 Episode 2 + CM 9.51 (DX9)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Race Driver GRID (DX9)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark Stalker: Clear Sky (DX10/DX10.1)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Benchmark World of Warcraft: WotLK (DX9)

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - PCGH Performance Index

• Radeon HD 5850 reviewed - Conclusion

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Author: Vötter, Sauter (Sep 30, 2009)

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Comments (4)

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Acantee09	Radeon HD 5850 reviewed The DirectX 11 bargain
Banned 23.11.2009 06:02	and there is no reason why you cant still listen to the BBC pre and post match if that what you did before.
Banned 23.11.2009 06:02

Ar.Pi	Re: Radeon HD 5850 reviewed: The DirectX 11 bargain
Senior Member 06.10.2009 18:49	though why did you use such absurdly punishing settings for stalker(4x msaa ffs :P ) Actually all games are set with 4XMSAA. I agree that heavy games like Crysis and STALKER should be tested with a bit more practical AA settings. Maybe X2 or X4. Very nice review, thanks. Card is great.
Senior Member 06.10.2009 18:49

lagathy

Re: Radeon HD 5850 reviewed: The DirectX 11 bargai...

Senior Member

01.10.2009 15:23

Damn,

i wish i lived anywhere but in the uk atm...these cards are stupdenously cheap for the rest of the world,frankly..id snap 2 of them up immediately if the pound/euro wasn't so atrocious

nice review..though why did you use such absurdly punishing settings for stalker(4x msaa ffs :P ) and crysis...you can't get any idea of the cards speeds with those settings....and why can't you include the overclocked results alongside the others??

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