GeForce GT 120 Mac Edition vs ATI Radeon HD 5870

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking594not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.55no data
Power efficiency2.13no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code nameCypressG96C
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date23 September 2009 (15 years ago)20 January 2009 (15 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$399 no data

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 cores160032
Core clock speed850 MHz550 MHz
Number of transistors2,154 million314 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm55 nm
Power consumption (TDP)188 Watt50 Watt
Texture fill rate68.008.800
Floating-point processing power2.72 TFLOPS0.0896 TFLOPS
ROPs328
TMUs8016

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
Length282 mm145 mm
Width2-slot1-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pinNone

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 GB512 MB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1200 MHz800 MHz
Memory bandwidth153.6 GB/s25.6 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 Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort1x DVI, 1x mini-DisplayPort
HDMI+-

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-1.1

Pros & cons summary


Recency 23 September 2009 20 January 2009
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 512 MB
Chip lithography 40 nm 55 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 188 Watt 50 Watt

ATI HD 5870 has an age advantage of 8 months, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 37.5% more advanced lithography process.

GT 120 Mac Edition, on the other hand, has 276% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 5870 and GeForce GT 120 Mac Edition. 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.

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ATI Radeon HD 5870
Radeon HD 5870
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 Mac Edition
GeForce GT 120 Mac Edition

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Community ratings

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Questions & comments

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