ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition vs HD 6850

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking622not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.96no data
Power efficiency2.77no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)TeraScale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code nameBartsCypress
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Designreferenceno data
Release date21 October 2010 (14 years ago)30 June 2010 (14 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$179 $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 cores9601600
Core clock speedno data850 MHz
Number of transistors1,700 million2,154 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)127 Watt228 Watt
Texture fill rate37.2068.00
Floating-point processing power1.488 TFLOPS2.72 TFLOPS
ROPs3232
TMUs4880

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).

Bus supportAGPno data
InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16PCIe 2.0 x16
Length198 mm279 mm
Width2-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 typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount1 GB1 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit256 Bit
Memory clock speedno data1195 MHz
Memory bandwidth128.0 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 Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort1x DVI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity+-
HDMI+-

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

CrossFire+-

API compatibility

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

DirectXDirectX® 1111.2 (11_0)
Shader Model5.05.0
OpenGL4.44.4
OpenCL1.21.2
Vulkan-N/A

Pros & cons summary


Recency 21 October 2010 30 June 2010
Power consumption (TDP) 127 Watt 228 Watt

HD 6850 has an age advantage of 3 months, and 79.5% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 5870 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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AMD Radeon HD 6850
Radeon HD 6850
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition
Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

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Community ratings

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4 564 votes

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2.3 9 votes

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Questions & comments

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