Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 5970

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 5970, 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 5850 stacks up against Radeon HD 5970, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 5970
Power consumption (TDP) 151 Watt 294 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 2x 6-pin 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 1 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort 2x DVI, 1x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 5970 has 94% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Both video cards are using PCIe 2.0 x16 interface connection to a motherboard.
  • Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 5970 have maximum RAM of 1 GB.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 5850 is build with Terascale 2 architecture, and Radeon HD 5970 - with TeraScale 2.
  • Both graphics cards have the same core clock speed.
  • Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 5970 are manufactured by 40 nm process technology.
  • Radeon HD 5970 is 64 mm longer, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 5970 is 2000 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 5850.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 9−10 10−12
ultra / 1080p 5−6 6−7
QHD / 1440p 0−1 1−2
low / 720p 21−24 24−27
medium / 1080p 12−14 14−16
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 5970 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 16% more, than Radeon HD 5850.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 5970
Architecture Terascale 2 TeraScale 2
Code name Cypress Hemlock
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 30 September 2009 18 November 2009
Pipelines 1440 1600
Core clock speed 725 MHz 725 MHz
Transistor count 2,154 million 2,154 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 40 nm
Texture fill rate 52.20 58.00
Floating-point performance 2,088.0 gflops 2x 2,320.0 gflops
Length 241 mm 305 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 2000 MHz 4000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 128.0 GB/s 128.0 GB/s
DirectX 11.2 (11_0) 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.0 5.0
OpenGL 4.4 4.4
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan N/A N/A
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