AMD’s Radeon HD 5850 Review

October 4th 2009 | 12,236 Views | Posted by admin |

Today the other shoe drops, with AMD launching the 5870’s companion card: the slightly pared down 5850. It’s the same Cypress core that we saw on the 5870 with the same features: DX11, Eyefinity, angle-independent anisotropic filtering, HDMI bitstreaming, and supersample anti-aliasing. The only difference between the two is performance and power – the 5850 is a bit slower, and a bit less power hungry. If by any chance you’ve missed our Radeon HD 5870 review, please check it out; it goes in to full detail on what AMD is bringing to the table with Cypress and the HD 5800 series.

	ATI Radeon HD 5870	ATI Radeon HD 5850	ATI Radeon HD 4890	ATI Radeon HD 4870
Stream Processors	1600	1440	800	800
Texture Units	80	72	40	40
ROPs	32	32	16	16
Core Clock	850MHz	725MHz	850MHz	750MHz
Memory Clock	1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5	1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5	975MHz (3900MHz data rate) GDDR5	900MHz (3600MHz data rate) GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Frame Buffer	1GB	1GB	1GB	1GB
Transistor Count	2.15B	2.15B	959M	956M
TDP	188W	151W	190W	150W
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 55nm	TSMC 55nm
Price Point	$379	$259	~$180	~$160

AMD updated the specs on the 5850 at the last moment when it comes to power. Idle power usage hasn’t changed, but the final parts are now specified for 151W load power, versus the 160W originally given to us, and 188W on the 5870. So for the power-conscious out there, the 5850 offers a load power reduction in lockstep with its performance reduction.

Cards AMD’s Radeon HD 5850 Review

As compared to the 5870, AMD has disabled two of the SIMDs and reduced the core clock from 850MHz to 725Mhz. This is roughly a 15% drop in clock speed and a 10% reduction in SIMD capacity, for a combined theoretical performance difference of 23%. Meanwhile the memory clock has been dropped from 1.2GHz to 1GHz, for a 17% overall reduction. Notably the ROP count has not been reduced, so the 5850 doesn’t lose as much rasterizing power as it does everything else, once again being 15% due to the drop in clock speed.

With the reduction in power usage, AMD was able to squeeze Cypress in to a slightly smaller package for the 5850. The 5850 lobs off an inch in length compared to the 5870, which will make it easier to fit in to cramped cases. However the power connectors have also been moved to the rear of the card, so in practice the space savings won’t be as great. Otherwise the 5850 is a slightly smaller 5870, using the same sheathed cooler design as the 5870, sans the backplate.

Cardback AMD’s Radeon HD 5850 Review

Port-side, the card is also unchanged from the 5870. 2 DVI ports, 1 HDMI port, and 1 DisplayPort adorn the card, giving the card the ability to drive 2 TMDS displays (HDMI/DVI), and a DisplayPort. As a reminder, the DisplayPort can be used to drive a 3^rd TMDS display, but only with an active (powered) adapter, which right now still run at over $100.

End AMD’s Radeon HD 5850 Review

AMD tells us that this is going to be a hard launch just like the 5870, with the 5850 showing up for $260. Given that the 5870 did in fact show up on-time and on-price, we expect the same for the 5850. However we don’t have any reason to believe 5850 supplies will be any more plentiful than 5870 supplies – never mind the fact that it’s in AMD’s interests to ship as many 5870s as they can right now given their higher price. So unless AMD has a lot of Cypress dice to harvest, we’re expecting the 5850 to be even harder to find.

Update: As of Wednesday afternoon we have seen some 5850s come in to stock, only to sell out again even sooner than the 5870s did. It looks like 5850s really are going to be harder to find.

Trio2 AMD’s Radeon HD 5850 Review

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Display Card, Hardwares & Parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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