Radeon RX 5900 vs ATI HD 5970

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking589not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.36no data
Power efficiency1.38no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)RDNA 2.0 (2020−2024)
GPU code nameHemlockNavi 21
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date18 November 2009 (15 years ago)no data
Launch price (MSRP)$699 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 cores16004096
Core clock speed725 MHzno data
Boost clock speedno data1635 MHz
Number of transistors2,154 million21,000 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm7 nm
Power consumption (TDP)294 Watt300 Watt
Texture fill rate58.00418.6
Floating-point processing power2.32 TFLOPS13.39 TFLOPS
ROPs3296
TMUs80256

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 4.0 x16
Length305 mmno data
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin2x 8-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 typeGDDR5GDDR6
Maximum RAM amount1 GB12 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit384 Bit
Memory clock speed1000 MHz14000 MHz
Memory bandwidth128.0 GB/s672.0 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 Connectors2x DVI, 1x mini-DisplayPort1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort
HDMI-+

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.2 (11_0)12 Ultimate (12_1)
Shader Model5.0no data
OpenGL4.44.6
OpenCL1.2no data
VulkanN/A-

Pros & cons summary


Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 12 GB
Chip lithography 40 nm 7 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 294 Watt 300 Watt

ATI HD 5970 has 2% lower power consumption.

RX 5900, on the other hand, has a 1100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 471.4% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 5970 and Radeon RX 5900. 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 5970
Radeon HD 5970
AMD Radeon RX 5900
Radeon RX 5900

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


3.6 43 votes

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3.5 15 votes

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Questions & comments

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