Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition vs ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

Primary details

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

Place in the rankingnot ratednot rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)Tesla 2.0 (2007−2013)
GPU code nameCypressGT200B
Market segmentDesktopWorkstation
Release date30 June 2010 (14 years ago)11 November 2008 (16 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$479 $1,799

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 cores1600192
Core clock speed850 MHz602 MHz
Number of transistors2,154 million1,400 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm55 nm
Power consumption (TDP)228 Watt150 Watt
Texture fill rate68.0038.53
Floating-point processing power2.72 TFLOPS0.4623 TFLOPS
ROPs3224
TMUs8064

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
Length279 mm267 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin1x 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 typeGDDR5GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount1 GB1536 MB
Memory bus width256 Bit384 Bit
Memory clock speed1195 MHz800 MHz
Memory bandwidth153.0 GB/s76.8 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 mini-DisplayPort2x DVI, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.2 (11_0)11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model5.04.0
OpenGL4.43.3
OpenCL1.21.1
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA-1.3

Pros & cons summary


Recency 30 June 2010 11 November 2008
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 1536 MB
Chip lithography 40 nm 55 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 228 Watt 150 Watt

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

FX 4800 Mac Edition, on the other hand, has a 50% higher maximum VRAM amount, and 52% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition and Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition is a desktop card while Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition is a workstation 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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ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition
Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition
Quadro FX 4800 Mac Edition

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