Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 7950

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 7950, 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 7950, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 7950
Power consumption (TDP) 151 Watt 200 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 2x 6-pin 2x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 3 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 7950 has 32% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Radeon HD 5850 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon HD 7950 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon HD 7950 has 2 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 5850 is build with Terascale 2 architecture, and Radeon HD 7950 - with GCN 1.0.
  • Radeon HD 5850 is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 7950 - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Radeon HD 7950 is 26 mm longer, than Radeon HD 5850.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 5850 is 750 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 7950.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 9−10 35−40
ultra / 1080p 5−6 21−24
QHD / 1440p 0−1 16−18
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 21−24 60−65
medium / 1080p 12−14 40−45
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7950 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 241% more, than Radeon HD 5850.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 7950
Architecture Terascale 2 GCN 1.0
Code name Cypress Tahiti
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 30 September 2009 31 January 2012
Pipelines 1440 1792
Core clock speed 725 MHz
Boost Clock 1250 MHz
Transistor count 2,154 million 4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 52.20 89.60
Floating-point performance 2,088.0 gflops 2,867 gflops
Length 241 mm 267 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 384 Bit
Memory clock speed 2000 MHz 1250 MHz
Memory bandwidth 128.0 GB/s 240 GB/s
DirectX 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.0 5.1
OpenGL 4.4 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan N/A
Monero / XMR (CryptoNight) 0.56 kh/s
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 3.0 x16
HDMI +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 381 Mh/s
Eyefinity +
PowerTune +
ZeroCore +
Design reference
Number of Eyefinity displays 6
CrossFire +
Decred / DCR (Decred) 0.78 Gh/s
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 13.86 Mh/s
Zcash / ZEC (Equihash) 250 Sol/s
Compute units 28
AppAcceleration +
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