ATI Radeon HD 5850 tested

 

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Posted on 6 Oct 2009 at 15:36

ATI's Radeon HD 5870 is the most powerful graphics card we've ever seen, but at just over £300 you'd be right to expect something pretty special. For keen gamers on more moderate budgets, the Radeon HD 5850 costs a more reasonable £200. It's still a lot of money for a graphics card, but thankfully it's worth every penny.

It may not be quite as powerful as its larger sibling, but it's still mind-blowingly quick. The core clock speed is down to 725MHz, from 850MHz; and the 1GB of GDDR5 memory also runs 200MHz slower. It has 1,440 stream processing units, and so can simultaneously execute this many vertex, geometry and pixel shading operations. It's only 160 units less than HD 5870 has, and a massive step up from the 800 such units found on most of the 4800-series cards.

Our benchmarks did show the differences between the cards, but only in the most demanding games. With 88.4fps in our Call of Duty 4 benchmark, the 5850 produced a slightly higher frame rate than when we tested the 5870, thanks to a new set of more refined drivers. In our demanding Crysis test, the HD 5850 dropped 8fps compared to the HD 5870. However, it still managed a smooth 42.4fps at a resolution of 1,920x1,200 ??" proving that it's capable of pleasing results on high-detail monitors.

Away from the core issue of raw performance, the HD 5850 has all the features that made the HD 5870 so exciting. It has full support for DirectX 11, which adds tessellation, allowing for more complex models in games, along with a range of new graphical effects. There's also Eyefinity, which lets you connect up to three displays to the card at Full-HD resolutions for multi-monitor gaming.

All the outputs you're likely to need are provided, with twin dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. It's a little bit shorter than the HD 5870, by 25mm, but still takes up two expansion slots in your PC. The HD 5850 requires two PCI-Express 6-pin power connectors, with ATI recommending a 500W power supply as a minimum. There's support for multiple cards via CrossFire, though we doubt may people will need the extra graphical muscle.

We've never seen a card this powerful at this price before; plus you're not only geting a great card today but also one with a lengthy lifespan thanks to its DirectX 11 support. If you're an avid gamer then we can't recommend it highly enough, everyone else, however, should strongly consider the upcoming, and more affordable, HD 5700-series cards. We'll bring you full reviews of those as soon as possible.

Author: Seth Barton