ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition vs Quadro FX 3800

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking858not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.06no data
Power efficiency1.37no data
ArchitectureTesla 2.0 (2007−2013)TeraScale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code nameGT200BCypress
Market segmentWorkstationDesktop
Release date30 March 2009 (15 years ago)30 June 2010 (14 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$799 $479

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

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 cores1921600
Core clock speed600 MHz850 MHz
Number of transistors1,400 million2,154 million
Manufacturing process technology55 nm40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)108 Watt228 Watt
Texture fill rate38.4068.00
Floating-point processing power0.4623 TFLOPS2.72 TFLOPS
ROPs1632
TMUs6480

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).

InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16PCIe 2.0 x16
Length198 mm279 mm
Width1-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin2x 6-pin

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 typeGDDR3GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount1 GB1 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit256 Bit
Memory clock speed800 MHz1195 MHz
Memory bandwidth51.2 GB/s153.0 GB/s

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 Connectors1x DVI, 2x DisplayPort1x DVI, 2x mini-DisplayPort

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX11.1 (10_0)11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model4.05.0
OpenGL3.34.4
OpenCL1.11.2
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA1.3-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 30 March 2009 30 June 2010
Chip lithography 55 nm 40 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 108 Watt 228 Watt

FX 3800 has 111.1% lower power consumption.

ATI HD 5870 Mac Edition, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 1 year, and a 37.5% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Quadro FX 3800 and Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Quadro FX 3800 is a workstation graphics card while Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition is a desktop one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800
Quadro FX 3800
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition
Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

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Community ratings

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3.1 49 votes

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2.3 9 votes

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Questions & comments

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