ATI Radeon HD 5950 vs GeForce GTX 590
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | 487 | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 0.74 | no data |
| Architecture | Fermi (2010−2014) | TeraScale 2 (2009−2015) |
| GPU code name | GF110 | Hemlock |
| Market segment | Desktop | Desktop |
| Release date | 24 March 2011 (13 years ago) | no data |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $699 | no data |
Cost-effectiveness evaluation
Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.
Detailed specifications
General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 1024 | 1440 |
| CUDA cores | 1024 | no data |
| Core clock speed | 607 MHz | 725 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 3,000 million | 2,154 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 40 nm | 40 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 365 Watt | 302 Watt |
| Maximum GPU temperature | 97 °C | no data |
| Texture fill rate | 38.91 | 52.20 |
| Floating-point processing power | 1.244 gflops | no data |
| ROPs | 48 | 32 |
| TMUs | 64 | 72 |
Form factor & compatibility
Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).
| Bus support | 16x PCI-E 2.0 | no data |
| Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 | PCIe 2.0 x16 |
| Length | 279 mm | 280 mm |
| Height | 4.376" (111 mm) (11.1 cm) | no data |
| Width | 2-slot | 2-slot |
| Supplementary power connectors | 2x 8-pin | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin |
| SLI options | + | - |
VRAM capacity and type
Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 3072 MB (1536 MB per GPU) | 1 GB |
| Memory bus width | 768-bit (384-bit per GPU) | 256 Bit |
| Memory clock speed | 1707 MHz | 4 GB/s |
| Memory bandwidth | 327.7 GB/s | 128.0 GB/s |
| Shared memory | - | - |
Connectivity and outputs
Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.
| Display Connectors | Three Dual Link DVI-IMini DisplayPort | 2x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.3a, 1x DisplayPort 1.1 |
| Multi monitor support | + | no data |
| HDMI | + | + |
| Maximum VGA resolution | 2048x1536 | no data |
| Audio input for HDMI | Internal | no data |
API compatibility
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 12 (11_0) | 11.2 (11_0) |
| Shader Model | 5.1 | 5.0 |
| OpenGL | 4.2 | 4.4 |
| OpenCL | 1.1 | 1.2 |
| Vulkan | N/A | N/A |
| CUDA | + | - |
Pros & cons summary
| Maximum RAM amount | 3072 MB (1536 MB per GPU) | 1 GB |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 365 Watt | 302 Watt |
GTX 590 has a 200% higher maximum VRAM amount.
ATI HD 5950, on the other hand, has 20.9% lower power consumption.
We couldn't decide between GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 5950. We've got no test results to judge.
Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.
Comparisons with similar GPUs
We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.
