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ATI Radeon HD 5870

ATI Radeon HD 5870: A Legend of the Past in the Age of Modern Technologies

(April 2025)

Introduction

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 is a graphics card that revolutionized the gaming industry in 2009. Despite its age, it remains a subject of interest for enthusiasts and collectors alike. In this article, we will explore its features, performance, and relevance in 2025.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The HD 5870 is built on the TeraScale 2 microarchitecture, debuting with support for DirectX 11. This enabled the card to utilize tessellation and improved graphics in games of that era.

Manufacturing Process: A groundbreaking 40nm production technology for 2009. The Cypress XT chip included 2.15 billion transistors, providing high computational density.

Unique Features:

- Eyefinity — support for up to 6 monitors to create large display arrays.

- ATI Stream — technology for accelerating parallel computations (a precursor to OpenCL).

- DirectX 11 and Shader Model 5.0 — key APIs for games of the late 2000s.

Modern equivalents: Technologies like FidelityFX, RTX, or DLSS are not available for the HD 5870. It is purely a rasterization card without hardware ray tracing or AI acceleration.

2. Memory

Type and Size: 1 GB of GDDR5 with a 256-bit bus — standard for top solutions of 2009.

Bandwidth:

- Effective memory clock: 4800 MHz.

- Bandwidth: 153.6 GB/s (calculated as: 4800 MHz × 256 bits / 8).

Impact on Performance: In 2009–2012, this was sufficient for gaming at 1080p. However, by 2025, even 2 GB of video memory is the minimal threshold for modern projects, rendering the HD 5870 unsuitable for new titles.

3. Gaming Performance

Retro Games (2009–2013):

- Crysis (2007): ~35 FPS at high settings in 1080p.

- Battlefield 3 (2011): 40-45 FPS at 1080p (Medium).

Modern Titles (2020–2025):

- Cyberpunk 2077: less than 15 FPS at low settings in 720p.

- Apex Legends: 20-25 FPS in 720p (Low).

Resolutions:

- 1080p: Only for older games.

- 1440p/4K: Impractical due to insufficient memory and computational power.

Ray Tracing: Absent. Modern games utilizing RTX/DXR will not run on the HD 5870.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing and 3D Modeling:

- Basic work in Adobe Premiere Pro or Blender is possible, but rendering will take 5-10 times longer than on modern GPUs.

- Limited support for OpenCL 1.0, with CUDA not available.

Scientific Calculations:

- Due to the outdated architecture and lack of optimization for modern libraries (TensorFlow, PyTorch), the card is practically useless.

Conclusion: The HD 5870 is only suitable for retro projects or for learning the basics of 3D graphics.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Output

TDP: 188 W — a high figure even by 2025 standards.

Cooling: Turbine-style system with a single fan. Noise level reaches up to 45 dB under load.

Recommendations:

- A case with good ventilation (at least 2 fans for intake/exhaust).

- Replacement of thermal paste is essential for used units.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Historical Competitors (2009–2010):

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480: More powerful in DirectX 11, but with a TDP of 250 W and high heat output.

- AMD Radeon HD 5970: A dual-chip version with 2 GB of memory, but a rarity in 2025.

Modern Equivalents (2025):

- NVIDIA RTX 3050: Ten times more performance, supporting DLSS 3.5 and RTX.

- AMD Radeon RX 7600: Energy-efficient, with 8 GB of GDDR6 and FSR 3.0.

The HD 5870 falls short even against budget models in 2025 but offers a competitive price in the second-hand market ($20–50 compared to $200–300 for new GPUs).

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply: Minimum of 500 W with 2×6-pin PCIe connectors.

Compatibility:

- Requires a motherboard with PCIe 2.0 (compatible with PCIe 3.0/4.0, but with bandwidth limitations).

- Drivers: Official support ended in 2015. For Windows 10/11, use modified community drivers.

OS: Best stability on Windows 7/8.1. On Linux, support is available through open-source drivers (radeon).

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Historical significance and cult status.

- Eyefinity support for multi-monitor setups.

- Low price in the second-hand market.

Cons:

- Does not support DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3.

- Limited memory (1 GB).

- High power consumption.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the HD 5870 For?

- Collectors and Enthusiasts: For retro builds or restoration of a 2000s PC.

- Low-Budget Projects: If a card is needed for office tasks or older games.

- Educational Purposes: Studying GPU history or the basics of OpenCL.

Why Not for Everyone? The HD 5870 is a relic of an era and not a tool for modern needs. In 2025, it should be regarded only as a part of history, not a primary graphics card.

Conclusion

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 is a symbol of a technological breakthrough for its time. Today, it reminds us of the rapid evolution of the industry. If you're looking to dive into nostalgia or build a retro PC, this card is worth considering. But for gaming and work in 2025, opt for modern solutions.

Basic

Label Name

ATI

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

September 2009

Model Name

Radeon HD 5870

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

1200MHz

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.

153.6 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.

27.20 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.

68.00 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.

544.0 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.

2.666 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.

1600

L1 Cache

8 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

188W

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

2.666 TFLOPS

OpenCL

Score

1849

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

FirePro S9010

2.81 +5.4%

Arc A310

2.742 +2.9%

Radeon HD 5870

2.666

Radeon RX 560

2.559 -4%

Radeon HD 8870 OEM

2.509 -5.9%

OpenCL

Radeon RX 6700S

62821 +3297.6%

Radeon Pro 5300

38843 +2000.8%

Radeon R9 M290X

21442 +1059.7%

Radeon Pro 455

11291 +510.7%

Radeon HD 5870

1849