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ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition: A Retro GPU in the Age of Modern Technology

Review for enthusiasts and owners of old systems (April 2025)

Introduction

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition is a relic from the golden era of GPUs, specifically released for Apple computers. Despite its venerable age, it continues to attract interest from enthusiasts and owners of older Mac Pros. Let’s explore what makes this model noteworthy in 2025 and who it might still be useful for.

Architecture and Key Features

TeraScale 2 Architecture

The HD 5870 Mac Edition is built on the TeraScale 2 architecture (RV870), which debuted in 2009. The chip is manufactured using a 40nm process and includes:

- 1600 stream processors;

- 80 texture units;

- 32 raster operation pipelines.

Technologies and Functions

The card is oriented towards DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3.2. Modern features such as ray tracing (RTX) or AI upscaling (DLSS/FidelityFX) are absent. However, it does support Eyefinity (output to 3 monitors) and OpenCL 1.1 for parallel computing— a rare capability for macOS-compatible GPUs of its time.

Mac Edition Features

The Mac version differs from the standard HD 5870 in its firmware and connectors, which are adapted for Mac Pro cases from 2009-2012. Support for DisplayPort 1.1 and Dual-Link DVI allows it to work with monitors up to 2560×1600 pixels.

Memory: Potential and Limitations

Type and Size

The card is equipped with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The memory bandwidth is 153.6 GB/s. For the DirectX 11 era, this was sufficient, but by 2025, even simple games require a minimum of 4-6 GB of VRAM.

Impact on Performance

The limited memory is the main issue. For instance, in GTA V (2015) at 1080p with medium settings, the card barely maintains 30 FPS due to insufficient VRAM. Modern titles like Cyberpunk 2077 (2022) are virtually unplayable on it.

Gaming Performance: Nostalgia with Stutters

Older Titles (2010-2015)

- Crysis 3 (2013): 25-35 FPS on medium settings (1080p);

- The Witcher 3 (2015): 20-25 FPS on low settings (720p);

- CS:GO (2012): 60-90 FPS (1080p, low settings).

Modern Games

Even indie games like Hades II (2024) require more resources. Resolutions beyond 1080p (1440p, 4K) are unachievable. Ray tracing is completely absent.

Conclusion

The HD 5870 Mac Edition is suitable only for retro gaming or undemanding 2D projects.

Professional Tasks: Time Has Passed

Video Editing

In 2025, editing 4K footage in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro is impossible. However, for working with SD/HD materials in older versions of Final Cut Pro X (pre-2018), OpenCL acceleration is still relevant.

3D Modeling

Blender 4.0 and Maya 2025 require a minimum of 4 GB VRAM and support for Vulkan. The HD 5870 can only handle simple scenes in Blender 2.79 (2017).

Scientific Calculations

OpenCL 1.1 allows for basic tasks, but performance is 10-20 times lower than that of modern Radeon Pro or NVIDIA RTX A-series.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and Cooling

The card has a TDP of 188W. The stock cooler is fairly noisy (up to 42 dB under load). For stable operation in a Mac Pro, regular cleaning of the cooling system and replacing thermal paste are necessary.

Case Recommendations

The card is compatible only with Mac Pro models from 2009-2012 (“cheese grater” style). Using it in PC cases may lead to issues with power connector compatibility (2×6-pin) and drivers.

Comparison with Competitors

Retro Competitors (2009-2010):

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 Mac: Lower performance, but better optimization for Adobe applications;

- AMD FirePro V8800: More expensive, but comes with 2 GB GDDR5 and professional software certification.

Modern Analogues (2025):

- NVIDIA RTX 3050: 20 times faster, 8 GB GDDR6, support for DLSS 3.5 — $249;

- AMD Radeon RX 7600: 18 GB/s bandwidth, FSR 3.0 — $229.

Practical Tips

Power Supply

A minimum of 500W with two 6-pin connectors is recommended. The stock PS (up to 980W) is suitable for Mac Pro 2009-2012.

Compatibility

- macOS: Up to version 10.13 High Sierra (2017) only;

- Windows: Via Boot Camp (Catalyst 15.7 drivers).

Drivers

Official support has ended. The enthusiast community releases patches for macOS Sonoma, but stability is not guaranteed.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Reliability and longevity;

- Compatibility with classic Mac Pro;

- OpenCL support for retro tasks.

Cons:

- Outdated architecture;

- Insufficient memory;

- Lack of support for modern APIs and technologies.

Final Verdict: Who Should Consider the HD 5870 Mac Edition?

This graphics card is a niche product for:

1. Owners of Mac Pro 2009-2012 looking to maintain system authenticity.

2. Retro hardware enthusiasts collecting legendary GPUs.

3. Users of specialized software where OpenCL 1.1 support is critical.

In 2025, the HD 5870 Mac Edition is more of an artifact than a working tool. For gaming and professional tasks, it is wiser to opt for budget modern cards like the Radeon RX 7600 or Intel Arc A580. However, if you appreciate the history of technology, this model deserves a place on the shelf (or in an old Mac Pro).

Prices for new devices: As of April 2025, the HD 5870 Mac Edition is no longer in production. At launch (2010), its retail price was $449.

Basic

Label Name

ATI

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

June 2010

Model Name

Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

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

1195MHz

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.

153.0 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.

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.

2.774 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

228W

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

550W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.774 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon R9 M295X

3.02 +8.9%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

2.898 +4.5%

Radeon HD 5870 Mac Edition

2.774

GeForce GTX 760 Ti OEM Rebrand

2.687 -3.1%

GeForce GTX 670

2.581 -7%