Sibling Rivalry - ATI Radeon HD 5850

Weaker, but Cheaper

The graphics war is looking more and more one-sided these days as ATI continues to pour out its latest Evergreen (Radeon 5000) series of cards. Just weeks after the range-topping Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850, the dudes in red followed up with their mainstream offerings, the HD 5770 and HD 5750. NVIDIA, on the other hand, has only the scrawny budget-class GeForce GT 220 to show for in recent months and its next-generation Fermi (GT300) cards are still nowhere to be seen.

Today, we are going to take a look at the Radeon HD 5850, what should be ATI's second-fastest GPU ever. Launched alongside the stunningly quick Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon HD 5850 hasn't quite received the attention bestowed on its more powerful sibling has. Living in the shadows of the HD 5870, the HD 5850 is a diluted version of the range-topping HD 5870. It sports fewer stream processors and lower clock speeds, but at US$259, it also means that it's considerably cheaper.

In terms of specifications, while the HD 5870 has 1600 stream processors, 80 texture mapping units, the less powerful HD 5850 has to make do with 1440 stream processors, 72 texture mapping units. The HD 5850 also gets bumped down clock speeds, 725MHz at the core and 4000MHz DDR at the memory, compared to the HD 5870's 750MHz and 4800MHz DDR. Happily, raster operating units stays the same at 32, and the HD 5850 also gets the same 256-bit wide memory bus width, so that should compensate, if only somewhat, for the fewer stream processors and lower clock speeds.

Despite being a weaker variant of the Radeon HD 5870, the specifications of Radeon HD 5850 is still leaps and bounds ahead of ATI's last generation flagship, the Radeon HD 4890, and it should be interesting to see what kind of performance it'll give. Here's a quick look at how the HD 5850 stacks up against competitive SKUs.

The HIS Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5

The HIS Radeon HD 5850 comes with ATI's reference cooler and PCB design, and as such, looks like a shrunken version of the Radeon HD 5870. Like the other ATI Evergreen cards we have tested thus far, the cooler was decently quiet during operation. Besides the reference design, the HIS card also sports reference clock speeds, which means 725MHz at the core and 4000MHz DDR at the memory.

Test Setup

The tests will be conducted on our usual Windows Vista, Intel X38 based system:

Windows Vista SP1 Test System:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
• Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard
• 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
• Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1

Judging from the specifications of the Radeon HD 5850, we think its performance would be somewhere in between the Radeon HD 5870 and the older Radeon HD 4890. But the more pressing question is how much slower than the HD 5870 would it be? We'll have also thrown in NVIDIA's GT200 class of cards to see how the HD 5850 stacks up against NVIDIA's finest.

Here's the complete list of cards tested and the driver versions used:

• HIS Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 (Beta 8.65)
• ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (Beta 8.66)
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 (Beta 8.66 RC9)
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.8)
• ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.8)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 190.62)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB GDDR3 (ForceWare 190.62)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 896MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 190.62)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB GDDr3 (ForceWare 190.62)

And the cards were tested using the following benchmarks:

• Futuremark 3DMark06
• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
• Crysis Warhead
• Far Cry 2
• Dawn of War 2

3DMark06 Results

The Radeon HD 5850 showed its mettle as we begin our report with 3DMark06, clocking scores that were just shy of the Radeon HD 5870. Against NVIDIA offerings, it did significantly better than all of NVIDIA's single GPU offering and was a match for the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295 up until anti-aliasing was enabled. Clearly, the smaller sibling of the HD 5870 is no pushover.

3DMark Vantage Results

The Radeon HD 5850 flexed its muscles once again on 3DMark Vantage, racking up scores that were extremely impressive. Once again, we noted that it did significantly poorer than the Radeon HD 5870. Despite that, it was powerful enough to outscore all of NVIDIA's single GPU cards. What's also interesting is the gulf between the HD 5850 and HD 5770.

Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2 Results

The Radeon HD 5850 performed decently on Crysis Warhead. Although it was nowhere as quick as the Radeon HD 5870, it still managed to outperform NVIDIA's quickest single GPU card, the GeForce GTX 285, albeit by the slightest of margins.

On Far Cry 2, the Radeon HD 5850 began brightly, clocking a massive 76.28 fps, which was a whopping 20% faster than what the GeForce GTX 285 could achieve. However, that lead gradually eroded as we increased the settings, indicating that the HD 5850 is not as adept as the HD 5870. We also noted that there was a big difference in performance between the HD 5850 and HD 5770 - the HD 5850 was about 50% quicker in all instances.

Dawn of War 2 Results

The Radeon HD 5850 performed superbly on Dawn of War 2, matching the more powerful Radeon HD 5870 all the way, and convincingly outperformed all of NVIDIA's offerings.

Temperature

Given the lower specifications of the Radeon HD 5850, it was not surprising that it was slightly cooler than the Radeon HD 5870. Clocking in at a moderate 74 degrees Celsius, we expect temperatures to go further south once vendors start rolling out HD 5850 with custom coolers. Also, the HD 5850 was also cooler than all of NVIDIA's GT 200 class cards except the GeForce GTX 260+.

Power Consumption

Power consumption figures were in line with our expectations too. Following the trend set by the new Evergreen cards, the Radeon HD 5850 recorded extremely low idle readings. At load, it was comparable with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260+. Once again, ATI has succeeded in a chip that gives an excellent performance to watt ratio.

Overclocking

The Radeon HD 5850 seemed to be a willing overclocker. Using ATI's Overdrive utility, we managed to push the HD 5850 to the maximum that ATI would allow us - 775MHz at the core and 4500MHz DDR at the memory. This represents a modest 50MHz bump at the core and 500MHz DDR at the memory. Despite the minor increase in clock speeds, we got 7005 3DMarks on the Vantage's Extreme preset, a respectable improvement of 5%.

Weaker, But Perhaps Better

Widely overlooked and quite often unavailable in retail at launch, the less powerful Radeon 5800 series card, the HD 5850 showed us today that it is no pushover. Despite sporting fewer stream processors and markedly lower clock speeds than the HD 5870, the HD 5850 proved that it was still quick enough to oust NVIDIA's single fastest GPU, the GeForce GTX 285, making it presently the world's second fastest GPU. That is impressive, to say the least.

What makes the Radeon HD 5850 even more enticing is its price. At US$259, it is a whopping US$120 cheaper than the Radeon HD 5870. That's quite the sum and personally we think it's a little excessive to pay US$120 more for that increase in performance, especially if you're not a hardcore gamer with fat pockets.

As it is, the HD 5850 makes the GTX 285 completely redundant. Not only does it outperform it in terms of frame rates, it also offers DirectX 11 support, and is less warm to operate and more power efficient. Given that GeForce GTX 285 cards are still going for around US$350 on Newegg, the HD 5850 is also much cheaper than the competition too. It's a no-brainer, really.

In the local scene, the Radeon HD 5850 is going at a slightly pricier S$399, but this is still much more affordable than the Radeon HD 5870's asking price of S$599. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285 cards are still commanding a hefty price of at least S$500. Hence, the HD 5850 retains its value buy proposition.

Offering a terrific blend of performance and price, the Radeon HD 5850 is for those who want top-end gaming performance, but don't have the cash to splash on the Radeon HD 5870.

With two of the world's fastest GPUs under their belt, ATI is sitting pretty now. And despite unveiling the Fermi architecture powering their next-generation cards at the recently concluded GPU Technology Conference, the fact remains that the guys in green have been comprehensively beaten to the market by ATI. The next few months should be interesting, as ATI prepares to launch their dual-GPU Hemlock cards and NVIDIA rushes against time to get their Fermi cards out before it's too late. But right now, however, all signs point to the Radeon HD 5850 as being the best bang for buck card bar none.

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