Radeon HD 4890 vs Radeon HD 5850

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 4890 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 Radeon HD 4890 stacks up against Radeon HD 5850, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 4890 Radeon HD 5850
Power consumption (TDP) 190 Watt 151 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 2x 6-pin 2x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 1 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x S-Video 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 4890 has 25% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Both video cards are using PCIe 2.0 x16 interface connection to a motherboard.
  • Radeon HD 4890 and Radeon HD 5850 have maximum RAM of 1 GB.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 4890 is build with TeraScale architecture, and Radeon HD 5850 - with Terascale 2.
  • Core clock speed of Radeon HD 4890 is 125 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Radeon HD 4890 is manufactured by 55 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 5850 - by 40 nm process technology.
  • Both graphics cards are the same length of 241 mm.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 4890 is 1900 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 5850.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 7−8 9−10
ultra / 1080p 4−5 5−6
QHD / 1440p 0−1 0−1
low / 720p 16−18 21−24
medium / 1080p 8−9 12−14
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 5850 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 33% more, than Radeon HD 4890.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 4890 Radeon HD 5850
Architecture TeraScale Terascale 2
Code name RV790 Cypress
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 2 April 2009 30 September 2009
Pipelines 800 1440
Core clock speed 850 MHz 725 MHz
Transistor count 959 million 2,154 million
Manufacturing process technology 55 nm 40 nm
Texture fill rate 34.00 52.20
Floating-point performance 1,360.0 gflops 2,088.0 gflops
Length 241 mm 241 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 3900 MHz 2000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 124.8 GB/s 128.0 GB/s
DirectX 10.1 (10_1) 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 4.1 5.0
OpenGL 3.3 4.4
OpenCL 1.1 1.2
Vulkan N/A N/A
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