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ATI Radeon HD 5850

ATI Radeon HD 5850 in 2025: A Retrospective and Practical Tips

An Overview of the Legendary Graphics Card from the Perspective of a Modern User

Introduction: Why is the HD 5850 Still Interesting?

Released in 2009, the ATI Radeon HD 5850 became a symbol of the era when GPUs began to actively develop support for DirectX 11 and multi-monitor systems. Today, 16 years later, this card evokes nostalgia among enthusiasts and curiosity among those looking to build a retro PC. In this article, we will explore what the HD 5850 can surprise us with in 2025 and who can still benefit from it.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The HD 5850 is built on the TeraScale 2 (RV870) microarchitecture. It was the first generation of AMD GPUs to fully support DirectX 11, which was a breakthrough in 2009.

Manufacturing Process: 40nm production technology (for comparison, modern cards use 4-5 nm). This ensured a good balance between performance and energy efficiency at the time of release.

Unique Features:

- Eyefinity — support for up to 3 monitors simultaneously (a revolution for multitasking and gaming).

- DirectX 11 — tessellation and improved shader modeling.

- No analogues for RTX/DLSS: The HD 5850 lacks ray tracing or upscaling technologies, which only emerged a decade later.

2. Memory: Modest but Progressive for Its Time

- Memory Type: GDDR5 (volume — 1 GB, bus width — 256 bits).

- Bandwidth: 128 GB/s (for comparison: the RTX 4060 has 272 GB/s).

- Impact on Performance: From 2009 to 2012, 1 GB was sufficient for gaming at 1080p, but today even indie games require at least 2-4 GB. In 2025, the HD 5850 will only be suitable for old games or 2D applications.

3. Gaming Performance: Nostalgia in Numbers

Examples of FPS in games from 2009-2012 (on high settings, 1080p):

- Crysis: 25-30 FPS.

- Battlefield: Bad Company 2: 35-40 FPS.

- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: 30-35 FPS.

Modern Projects (2020+):

- CS2: 20-25 FPS on minimum settings.

- Fortnite: 15-20 FPS (without support for new graphics APIs).

- 4K? Impossible even for less demanding games.

Ray Tracing: Not supported — for this, GPUs with RDNA 2/3 or NVIDIA Ampere/Ada Lovelace architecture are required.

4. Professional Tasks: Moderate Potential

- Video Editing: In basic editors (such as Adobe Premiere Pro CS6), the HD 5850 can handle HD video rendering, but modern codecs (H.265, AV1) are not supported.

- 3D Modeling: Programs like Blender 2.7 use OpenCL, but rendering speed will be 10-15 times lower than that of modern budget cards.

- Scientific Calculations: OpenCL 1.1 support is limited — the card is unsuitable for machine learning or simulations.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

- TDP: 151 W — more modest than the flagship models of 2025 (like the RTX 4070 — 200 W), but average for its time.

- Cooling: The standard cooler will work in a case with good ventilation. However, due to the card's age, it’s advisable to replace the thermal paste and check the fans for wear.

- Case Recommendations: At least 2 expansion slots, 1-2 intake fans.

6. Comparison with Competitors: Who Was Stronger in 2009?

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285: Approximately equal performance, but the HD 5850 has lower power consumption and supports DirectX 11.

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275: Cheaper, but weaker in tessellation tests.

- AMD Radeon HD 5870: Higher model on the same architecture — 10-15% faster, but more expensive.

In 2025: All these cards are artifacts. For comparison, even a budget NVIDIA GTX 1650 (2019) is 3-4 times more powerful than the HD 5850.

7. Practical Tips for Users in 2025

- Power Supply: At least 450 W with 6-pin and 8-pin connectors.

- Compatibility: PCIe 2.0 x16 — works in PCIe 3.0/4.0 slots, but with bandwidth limitations.

- Drivers: Official support was discontinued in 2015. The best option is Windows 7/8.1 or Linux with open-source drivers.

- Price: New units are not available. Used options range from $20-40 (collector's market).

8. Pros and Cons of the ATI Radeon HD 5850

Pros:

- Historical value for enthusiasts.

- Low price on the secondary market.

- Support for Eyefinity for multi-monitor configurations.

Cons:

- Does not support modern APIs (Vulkan, DirectX 12 Ultimate).

- Insufficient memory for 2025 tasks.

- Lack of energy-saving technologies (e.g., Zero Fan in idle).

9. Conclusion: Who is the HD 5850 Suitable For?

This graphics card isn't for gamers in 2025, but it will find an audience among:

1. Collectors and retro enthusiasts — for restoring a 2000s PC.

2. Old game lovers — to run Crysis or Mass Effect 2 in authentic conditions.

3. Experimenters — testing legacy systems and comparing technologies.

Epilogue: The HD 5850 as a Symbol of Evolution

The ATI Radeon HD 5850 reminds us of how far the industry has come in 16 years. Today, even smartphones outperform it in terms of capability, but without such cards, there would be no modern Radeon RX 8000 or GeForce RTX 50 series. This is not just hardware — it's part of history.

Basic

Label Name

ATI

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

September 2009

Model Name

Radeon HD 5850

Generation

Evergreen

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

2,154 million

Compute Units

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.

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.

256bit

Memory Clock

1000MHz

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.

128.0 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.

23.20 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.

52.20 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

417.6 GFLOPS

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.

2.046 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.

1440

L1 Cache

8 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

151W

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

2x 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.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.046 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 775M Mac Edition

2.185 +6.8%

Radeon HD 7970M

2.132 +4.2%

Radeon HD 5850

2.046

Radeon R7 360 896SP

2.01 -1.8%

FirePro V7800

1.976 -3.4%