Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.
ATI Radeon HD 5970: specs and benchmarks
Price now
69$
Games supported
66%
- Interface PCIe 2.0 x16
- Core clock speed 725 MHz
- Max video memory 1024 MB
- Memory type GDDR5
- Memory clock speed 4000 MHz
- Maximum resolution
Year of release
2009
Performance
5.86
Summary
ATI started Radeon HD 5970 sales 18 November 2009 at a recommended price of $699. This is a desktop graphics card based on a TeraScale 2 architecture and made with 40 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 1 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 128.0 GB/s.
Compatibility-wise, this is dual-slot card attached via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 305 mm. One 6-pin and one 8-pin connectors are required, and power consumption is at 294 Watt.
It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at
5.86%
of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
General info
Some basic facts about Radeon HD 5970: architecture, market segment, release date etc.
| Place in performance ranking | 502 | |
| Value for money | 0.82 | |
| Architecture | TeraScale 2 (2009−2015) | |
| GPU code name | Hemlock | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Release date | 18 November 2009 (13 years old) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $699 | |
| Current price | $69 (0.1x MSRP) | of 158889 (A100 PCIe) |
Value for money
Technical specs
Radeon HD 5970's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 5970's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 1600 | of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) |
| Core clock speed | 725 MHz | of 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT) |
| Number of transistors | 2,154 million | of 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile) |
| Manufacturing process technology | 40 nm | of 4 (GeForce RTX 4080) |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 294 Watt | of 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texture fill rate | 58.00 | of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB) |
| Floating-point performance | 2x 2,320.0 gflops | of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo) |
Size and compatibility
This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 5970 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).
| Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 | |
| Length | 305 mm | |
| Width | 2-slot | |
| Supplementary power connectors | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin |
Memory
Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 5970: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 1 GB | of 128 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory bus width | 256 Bit | of 8192 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock speed | 4000 MHz | of 22400 (GeForce RTX 4080) |
| Memory bandwidth | 128.0 GB/s | of 14400 (Radeon R7 M260) |
Video outputs and ports
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 5970. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.
| Display Connectors | 2x DVI, 1x mini-DisplayPort |
API support
APIs supported by Radeon HD 5970, sometimes including their particular versions.
| DirectX | 11.2 (11_0) | |
| Shader Model | 5.0 | |
| OpenGL | 4.4 | of 4.6 (GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile) |
| OpenCL | 1.2 | |
| Vulkan | N/A |
Benchmark performance
Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 5970. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
This is probably the most ubiquitous benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.
Benchmark coverage: 24%
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature seemingly made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.
Benchmark coverage: 13%
Send in your benchmark results
Send your test results of Radeon HD 5970.
Gaming performance
Let's see how good Radeon HD 5970 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.
Relative perfomance
Radeon HD 5970's performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.
NVIDIA equivalent
According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 5970 is P106-090, which is faster by 2% and higher by 3 positions in our ranking.
Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 5970:
Similar GPUs
Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended processors
These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 5970 according to our statistics.
5.7%
4.5%
3.4%
2.3%
2.3%
2.3%
2.3%
2.3%
2.3%
