Quadro M520 vs Radeon HD 5850

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Quadro M520 and Radeon HD 5850, 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 Quadro M520 stacks up against Radeon HD 5850, check out specs charts below.

Quadro M520 is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Quadro M520 is only used in laptop graphics. It has 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 Quadro M520 here:

Main Specs

  Quadro M520 Radeon HD 5850
Power consumption (TDP) 25 Watt 151 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 2x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 1 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 5850 has 504% more power consumption, than Quadro M520.
  • Quadro M520 has 1 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Quadro M520 is used in Mobile workstations, and Radeon HD 5850 - in Desktops.
  • Quadro M520 is build with Maxwell architecture, and Radeon HD 5850 - with Terascale 2.
  • Core clock speed of Quadro M520 is 31 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Quadro M520 is manufactured by 28 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 5850 - by 40 nm process technology.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 9−10 9−10
ultra / 1080p 5−6 5−6
QHD / 1440p 0−1 0−1
low / 720p 21−24 21−24
medium / 1080p 12−14 12−14
Quadro M520 and Radeon HD 5850 have the same average FPS in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Full Specs

  Quadro M520 Radeon HD 5850
Architecture Maxwell Terascale 2
Code name Cypress
Type Mobile workstation Desktop
Release date 13 January 2017 30 September 2009
Pipelines 384 1440
Core clock speed 756 MHz 725 MHz
Boost Clock 1019 MHz
Transistor count 2,154 million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 40 nm
Texture fill rate 52.20
Floating-point performance 2,088.0 gflops
Length 241 mm
Memory bus width 64 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 2000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 40 GB/s 128.0 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX 12 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.0 5.0
OpenGL 4.5 4.4
OpenCL 1.2
Vulkan N/A
Laptop size medium sized
Optimus +
nView Display Management +
3D Stereo +
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