ATI Radeon HD 5750

ATI Radeon HD 5750

ATI Radeon HD 5750 in 2025: A Retrospective and Practical Value

Overview of an obsolete GPU for enthusiasts and minimalists

Introduction

The ATI Radeon HD 5750, released in 2009, was once considered an affordable solution for mid-range gaming. However, in 2025, its role in the tech ecosystem has changed dramatically. This article will explore whether it still holds relevance today and who might find it useful.


1. Architecture and Key Features

TeraScale 2 Architecture (Evergreen)

The HD 5750 is built on the TeraScale 2 architecture, utilizing a 40nm manufacturing process. It is the second generation of AMD's Unified Shader Architecture, featuring 720 stream processors (SP) responsible for calculations.

Features of Its Time

- DirectX 11: Support for new effects in 2010s games, such as tessellation.

- Eyefinity: Ability to connect up to three monitors—a revolution for multitasking.

- Lack of Modern Technologies: No equivalents of RTX, DLSS, or FidelityFX. Compatibility with FidelityFX (introduced in 2019) is absent.

Conclusion: The architecture is outdated, but it offered good value for money in its prime.


2. Memory: Modest Specifications for 2025

Type and Size

- GDDR5: 1 GB of memory with a 128-bit bus.

- Bandwidth: 73.6 GB/s (for comparison, GDDR6 in budget cards of 2025 offers up to 336 GB/s).

Impact on Performance

1 GB of memory is critically insufficient for modern games and applications. For instance, even basic titles like Fortnite (2025) require a minimum of 2 GB of VRAM to run on low settings.


3. Gaming Performance: A Nostalgia for the Past

Real FPS Examples (2025)

- CS2 (1080p, low settings): ~40-50 FPS (with dips during active scenes).

- GTA V (720p, minimum settings): ~30-35 FPS.

- Hogwarts Legacy (720p, minimum settings): Does not launch due to insufficient VRAM.

Resolution Support

- 1080p: Only for older games (pre-2015) or 2D applications.

- 1440p and 4K: Not feasible due to weak performance and memory.

Ray Tracing: Absent. This technology emerged a decade after the release of the HD 5750.


4. Professional Tasks: Not the Best Choice

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

- Premiere Pro/Blender: Projects can be opened, but rendering takes 5-10 times longer than on modern GPUs.

- OpenCL: Supported, but performance lags behind that of integrated graphics like the Ryzen 5 8600G (2024).

Scientific Computing

Narrow memory buses and a low number of SP render the card unsuitable for machine learning or simulations.


5. Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP and Recommendations

- TDP 86W: Low power consumption, even by 2025 standards.

- Cooling: Passive or low-power active coolers. Overheating may occur in poorly ventilated cases under prolonged load.

Assembly Tips

- Power Supply: A 400W PSU is sufficient (with headroom for other components).

- Case: Mini-ITX builds are possible, but at least one exhaust fan is needed.


6. Comparison with Competitors

Retro Competitors (2009-2010)

- NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450: Comparable in performance but has worse optimization for modern operating systems.

- AMD Radeon HD 5770: 10-15% faster but pricier in the secondary market.

Modern Analogues (2025)

- Intel Arc A310: 3 times faster, supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, priced at $90 (new).

- AMD Radeon RX 6400: 4 GB GDDR6, suitable for 1080p gaming, priced at $120.


7. Practical Tips

Power Supply and Compatibility

- Budget PSU: Corsair CV450 (2024) or similar will suffice.

- Platforms: Compatible with motherboards featuring PCIe 2.0/3.0. Works without issues on PCIe 4.0/5.0, but with no speed gain.

Drivers

- Official Support: Discontinued in 2015. Enthusiast communities release unofficial patches for Windows 10/11.

- Linux: Better compatibility with open-source AMDGPU drivers.


8. Pros and Cons

Pros

- Low power consumption.

- Quiet operation in office scenarios.

- Support for three monitors via DisplayPort 1.1 and HDMI 1.3.

Cons

- Insufficient VRAM for modern tasks.

- Lack of support for new APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3).

- Poor gaming performance post-2015.


9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Consider the HD 5750 in 2025?

Target Audience

- Retro Game Enthusiasts: For running older titles like Half-Life 2 or Skyrim (2011) on original hardware.

- Office PCs: If multiple screen output is needed without graphical demands.

- Temporary Solution: While saving for a modern graphics card.

Why Not Recommended for New Users?

Even budget GPUs of 2025 (such as the Intel Arc A310) offer significantly better performance for $90-120. The HD 5750 is a choice for specific scenarios but not for mainstream users.


Conclusion

The ATI Radeon HD 5750 in 2025 is an artifact of its era, a reminder of how rapidly technology advances. It could be useful for niche tasks, but for most users, the choice is clear in favor of modern solutions.

Basic

Label Name
ATI
Platform
Desktop
Launch Date
October 2009
Model Name
Radeon HD 5750
Generation
Evergreen
Bus Interface
PCIe 2.0 x16
Transistors
1,040 million
Compute Units
9
TMUs
?
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.
36
Foundry
TSMC
Process Size
40 nm
Architecture
TeraScale 2

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
1024MB
Memory Type
GDDR5
Memory Bus
?
The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.
128bit
Memory Clock
1150MHz
Bandwidth
?
Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.
73.60 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate
?
Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.
11.20 GPixel/s
Texture Rate
?
Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.
25.20 GTexel/s
FP32 (float)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
1.028 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units
?
The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.
720
L1 Cache
8 KB (per CU)
L2 Cache
256KB
TDP
86W
Vulkan Version
?
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.
N/A
OpenCL Version
1.2
OpenGL
4.4
DirectX
11.2 (11_0)
Power Connectors
1x 6-pin
Shader Model
5.0
ROPs
?
The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.
16
Suggested PSU
250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
1.028 TFLOPS
OpenCL
Score
884

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
1.102 +7.2%
1.067 +3.8%
1.007 -2%
0.98 -4.7%
OpenCL
62821 +7006.4%
38843 +4294%
21442 +2325.6%
11291 +1177.3%