FirePro W5170M vs Mobility Radeon HD 5870

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between FirePro W5170M and Mobility Radeon HD 5870, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the FirePro W5170M stacks up against Mobility Radeon HD 5870, check out specs charts below.

FirePro W5170M and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 are Laptop Graphics Cards

Note: FirePro W5170M and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 are only used in laptop graphics. They have lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with FirePro W5170M or Mobility Radeon HD 5870 here:

Main Specs

  FirePro W5170M Mobility Radeon HD 5870
Power consumption (TDP) 50 Watt
Interface MXM-A (3.0) MXM-B (3.0)
Supplementary power connectors None
Memory type GDDR5 DDR3, GDDR3, GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 1 GB
Display Connectors No outputs No outputs
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  • FirePro W5170M is connected by MXM-A (3.0), and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 uses MXM-B (3.0) interface.
  • FirePro W5170M has 1 GB more memory, than Mobility Radeon HD 5870.
  • FirePro W5170M is used in Mobile workstations, and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 - in Laptops.
  • FirePro W5170M is build with GCN architecture, and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 - with Terascale 2.
  • FirePro W5170M is manufactured by 28 nm process technology, and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 - by 40 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of FirePro W5170M is 3500 MHz higher, than Mobility Radeon HD 5870.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 10−12 10−11
ultra / 1080p 6−7 6−7
QHD / 1440p 1−2 0−1
low / 720p 24−27 21−24
medium / 1080p 12−14 12−14
The average gaming FPS of FirePro W5170M in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 7% more, than Mobility Radeon HD 5870.

Full Specs

  FirePro W5170M Mobility Radeon HD 5870
Architecture GCN Terascale 2
Code name Tropo Broadway-XT
Type Mobile workstation Laptop
Release date 2 October 2015 7 January 2010
Pipelines 640 800
Core clock speed 700 MHz
Boost Clock 925 MHz
Transistor count 1,500 million 1,040 million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 40 nm
Texture fill rate 37.00 28.00
Floating-point performance 1,184 gflops 1,120.0 gflops
Memory bus width 128 Bit 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 4500 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 72 GB/s 64 GB/s
Shared memory - -
DirectX 12 (11_1) 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.1 5.0
OpenGL 4.6 4.4
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan 1.2.131 N/A
Laptop size large large
Eyefinity +
AppAcceleration +
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