GeForce FX 5500 vs Radeon HD 6870

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking595not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.93no data
Power efficiency2.65no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)Rankine (2003−2005)
GPU code nameBartsNV34 B1
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Designreferenceno data
Release date21 October 2010 (14 years ago)17 March 2004 (20 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$239 $36.99

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 cores1120no data
Core clock speedno data270 MHz
Boost clock speed900 MHzno data
Number of transistors1,700 million45 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm150 nm
Power consumption (TDP)151 Wattno data
Texture fill rate50.401.080
Floating-point processing power2.016 TFLOPSno data
ROPs324
TMUs564

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 supportPCIe 2.0 x16no data
InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16AGP 8x
Length220 mm152 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 typeGDDR5DDR
Maximum RAM amount1 GB64 MB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1050 MHz166 MHz
Memory bandwidth134.4 GB/s5.312 GB/s
Shared memory-no data

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, 1x VGA, 1x S-Video
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® 119.0a
Shader Model5.0no data
OpenGL4.41.5 (2.1)
OpenCL1.2N/A
Vulkan-N/A

Synthetic benchmark performance

Non-gaming benchmark results comparison. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.



Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of 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.

HD 6870 2217
+27613%
FX 5500 8

Pros & cons summary


Recency 21 October 2010 17 March 2004
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 64 MB
Chip lithography 40 nm 150 nm

HD 6870 has an age advantage of 6 years, a 1500% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 275% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 6870 and GeForce FX 5500. 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 6870
Radeon HD 6870
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500
GeForce FX 5500

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.


3.8 343 votes

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3.3 142 votes

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Questions & comments

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