ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 is a high-end DirectX 11 capable graphics card for laptops / notebooks by AMD. Technically the HD5850 is a 11% slower clocked Mobility Radeon HD 5870 and therefore also based on the desktop HD 5770 (RV840) chip with slower clock rates. In contrary to the HD 5870, the 5850 is sometimes equipped with slow DDR3 graphics memory.

The memory interface of the Mobility 5850 is composed out of two 64 bit wide controllers leading to a 128 bit memory bus that can access up to 1024 MB of DDR3 or GDDR5 memory (512 MB GDDR3). If (G)DDR3 is used by the laptop vendor the performance clearly suffers noticable.

The 5850 offers 800 MADD cores (called Stream Processors) which are grouped in 160 5-dimensional groups. The cores support DirectX 11 functions in hardware (Tessellation, OIT, Post-Processing, Shadows, HDR Texture Compression). Furthermore, 16 ROPs, 40TMUs, and 40 TAUs can be found on the chip. All in all 1040 Mio transistors offer a theroretic computation power of up to 1.12 TFLOPS. 

According to AMD, the HD 5000 series was also improved regarding general computing (as the HD4000 series was not optimized for this). Therefore, the performance of ATI stream, OpenCL, and DirectCompute 11 applications should be noticable better.

The 3D performance of the Mobility HD 5850 depends heavily on the used graphics ram. As long as fast GDDR5 is used, the performance should be between a GeForce GTX 260M - 280M in the high end segment. Therefore, all current games (2009) should be playable in high details with high resolutions. With DDR3 memory the performance should drop noticeably because of the 128 Bit wide memory bus. Which games run fluently and detailled benchmarks can be found on the lower section of this page (permanently maintained). In the 3DMark Vantage tests, the impact of DDR3 versus GDDR5 can be seen. The GDDR5 version (on par with a GTX 285M) is about 40% faster in this benchmark than the DDR3 equipped version (on par with a GTX 260M).

The Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series includes an improved video processor (UVD2) to decode HD videos with the graphic card. The new version is able to decode two HD streams simultaneously (e.g., for Blu-Ray picture in picture) if the graphic card offers enough memory bandwidth (only GDDR5 versions?). Since the Flash 10.1 Beta, the 5000 series is also able to help accelerate Flash HD videos (like YouTube).

A special feature of the HD 5000 series is its ability to transmit HD audio formats (like Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master Audio) with up to 8 channels and 192 KHz / 24 Bit over HDMI 1.3a.

As the desktop HD 5000 series, the Mobility HD 5850 also supports Eyefinity to connect up to 6 monitors to the graphics chip. Of course, this depends on how many monitor outputs the laptop vendor adds to the laptop (and how they are wired). Still, according to our informations, the laptop need DisplayPort outputs for Eyefinity to work and therefore only one laptop with Eyefinity support is on the market (Envy 17).

Due to the high power consumption of the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 (40-60 Watt of the 5800 series), it is only suited for large laptops with good (and possibly loud) cooling solutions. According to AMD, the performance per watt ratio (same power consumption, better performance) and the Idle power consumption were improved (thanks to Memory Clock Scaling and Clock Gating). Furthermore, the chip does support PowerXpress (with AMD chipset) and Switchable Graphics (Intel) to switch between the dedicated and chipset / CPU graphics card (with improved switching times).

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 should perform slower than a Radeon HD 5750 due to the slow clock rate.

ManufacturerATI
Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series

Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire 1600@700MHz

Mobility Radeon HD 5870 800@700MHz

Mobility Radeon HD 5850 800@625MHz

Mobility Radeon HD 5830 800@500MHz

CodenameBroadway-PRO
Pipelines800 - unified
Core Speed *625 MHz
Shader Speed *625 MHz
Memory Speed *2000 MHz
Memory Bus Width128 Bit
Memory TypeDDR3, GDDR3, GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory1024 MB
Shared Memoryno
DirectXDirectX 11, Shader 5.0
Current Consumption39 Watt
Transistors1040 Million
technology40 nm
FeaturesEyefinity (up to 6 displays), HD Audio (Dolby True HD, DTS HD), HDMI 1.3a, Avivo HD (UVD2.2)
Notebook Sizelarge
Date of Announcement07.01.2010
Information1.0 TFLOPS
Link to Manufacturer Pagehttp://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/...
* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

Benchmarks

3DMark 2001SE - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 35281     avg: 35281 (58%)     max: 35281 Points
3DMark 03 - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 24488     avg: 28295.8 (27%)     max: 35948 Points
3DMark 05 - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 12837     avg: 15364.8 (48%)     max: 17072 Points
3DMark 06
0% 100%
min: 7885     avg: 9775.9 (38%)     max: 12027 Points
PCMark Vantage - Gaming Score 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 4791     avg: 5613.6 (26%)     max: 6091 Points
Cinebench R10 - Shading 32Bit
0% 100%
min: 4549     avg: 5520.7 (51%)     max: 6340 Points
3DMark Vantage - P Result no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 4963     avg: 5854.8 (19%)     max: 7147 Points
3DMark Vantage - P GPU no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 4412     avg: 5365.6 (16%)     max: 7089 Points
Windows 7 Experience Index - Graphics
0% 100%
min: 6.8     avg: 6.9 (87%)     max: 7.2 points
Windows 7 Experience Index - Gaming graphics
0% 100%
min: 6.8     avg: 6.9 (87%)     max: 7.2 points
Cinebench R11.5 - OpenGL 64Bit
0% 100%
min: 17.78     avg: 26.4 (35%)     max: 40.31 Points
Unigine Heaven 2.1 - high, Tesselation (normal), DirectX11 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 14.7     avg: 17.1 (13%)     max: 19.5 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - Catia 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 4.27     avg: 4.3 (10%)     max: 4.27 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - Ensight 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 10.3     avg: 10.3 (26%)     max: 10.3 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - Lightwave 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 16.9     avg: 16.9 (31%)     max: 16.9 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - Maya 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 5.91     avg: 5.9 (6%)     max: 5.91 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - Pro/ENGINEER 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 1.6     avg: 1.6 (12%)     max: 1.6 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - SolidWorks 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 15.4     avg: 15.4 (28%)     max: 15.4 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - Tcvis 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 3.79     avg: 3.8 (9%)     max: 3.79 fps
SPECviewperf 11 - Siemens NX 1920x1080
0% 100%
min: 5.31     avg: 5.3 (13%)     max: 5.31 fps
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)
low:
57 57 57 ~ 57 fps      Compare
med.:
52 52 52 ~ 52 fps      Compare
high:
49 49 49 ~ 49 fps      Compare
ultra:
37 37 37 ~ 37 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Fifa 11
Fifa 11 (2010)
med.:
150.8  fps      Compare
high:
90.8  fps      Compare
ultra:
54.9  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Civilization 5 (2010): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings low. - more...
Mafia 2
Mafia 2 (2010)
med.:
53.8 56.3 ~ 55 fps      Compare
high:
46.4 50.1 ~ 48 fps      Compare
ultra:
29.3 31.1 ~ 30 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
StarCraft 2
StarCraft 2 (2010)
low:
160  fps      Compare
med.:
49.3 51.8 54 ~ 52 fps      Compare
high:
30.4 33.2 52 ~ 39 fps      Compare
ultra:
19.3 20.2 30 ~ 23 fps      Compare
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Just Cause 2 (2010): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...
Metro 2033
Metro 2033 (2010)
low:
66.6  fps      Compare
med.:
32 33.5 ~ 33 fps      Compare
high:
17.7 19 19.3 ~ 19 fps      Compare
ultra:
5.5  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings low.
Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising (2010): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings med.. - more...
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010)
med.:
50.9 55.5 75.1 ~ 61 fps      Compare
high:
36.5 40.1 54.5 ~ 44 fps      Compare
ultra:
17.5 18.6 30.8 ~ 22 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Stalker: Call of Pripyat (2010): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...
CoD Modern Warfare 2
CoD Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
med.:
51.9 56.5 73.4 ~ 61 fps      Compare
high:
42.5 47.8 64.3 ~ 52 fps      Compare
ultra:
26.9 30.9 46.7 ~ 35 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Risen
Risen (2009)
low:
88  fps      Compare
med.:
37.8 38 42 52.5 ~ 43 fps      Compare
high:
27 27.6 30.6 37.8 ~ 31 fps      Compare
ultra:
20 20.2 22.4 29.1 ~ 23 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings med..
Resident Evil 5
Resident Evil 5 (2009)
low:
83.3  fps      Compare
high:
53.3  fps      Compare
ultra:
31.1  fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Need for Speed Shift
Need for Speed Shift (2009)
med.:
47.6 49.8 50 ~ 49 fps      Compare
high:
36.9 38.6 48.2 ~ 41 fps      Compare
ultra:
23.6 23.8 40.1 ~ 29 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Colin McRae: DIRT 2
Colin McRae: DIRT 2 (2009)
med.:
66 67.2 69.5 ~ 68 fps      Compare
high:
33.3 35 53.8 ~ 41 fps      Compare
ultra:
18.3 18.6 31.8 ~ 23 fps      Compare
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Anno 1404
Anno 1404 (2009)
ultra:
37 40.8 57.3 ~ 45 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
ArmA 2 (2009): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...
F.E.A.R. 2
F.E.A.R. 2 (2009)
med.:
80.7 84.9 86.8 ~ 84 fps      Compare
high:
58.9 62.6 82.2 ~ 68 fps      Compare
ultra:
31.2 32.3 56.6 ~ 40 fps      Compare
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
GTA IV - Grand Theft Auto (2008): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings low. - more...
Crysis - GPU Benchmark
Crysis - GPU Benchmark (2007)
med.:
56.2 57.6 65.1 ~ 60 fps      Compare
high:
37.4 39.8 46.6 ~ 41 fps      Compare
ultra:
10.2 10.7 16.2 ~ 12 fps      Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Crysis - CPU Benchmark
Crysis - CPU Benchmark (2007)
med.:
54.7 56.7 60.8 ~ 57 fps      Compare
high:
30.5 32.4 44.6 ~ 36 fps      Compare
ultra:
9.1 9.5 14.8 ~ 11 fps      Compare
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
World in Conflict - Benchmark (2007): Playable with a weaker graphics card in detail settings high. - more...

For more games that might be playable and a list of all games and graphics cards visit our Gaming List

Notebook reviews with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 graphics card

Acer Aspire 5942G-524G64Bn (Intel Core i5 520M, 15.6")
» Acer Aspire 5942G-524G64Bn - External Review

Acer Aspire 5943G (Intel Core i7 620M, 15.6")
» Acer Aspire 5943G - External Review

Acer Aspire 5943G-5454G64Mnss (Intel Core i7 620M, 15.6")
» Acer Aspire 5943G-5454G64Mnss - External Review

Acer Aspire 5943G-728G64Wnss (Intel Core i7 720QM, 15.6")
» Review Acer Aspire 5943G Notebook - Review
» Acer Aspire 5943G-728G64Wnss - External Review

Acer Aspire 5943G-7748G64Wnss (Intel Core i7 740QM, 15.6")
» Acer Aspire 5943G-7748G64Wnss - External Review

Acer Aspire 7745G-434G50Bn (Intel Core i5 430M, 17.3")
» Review Acer Aspire 7745G Notebook - Review
» Acer Aspire 7745G-434G50Bn - External Review

Acer Aspire 7745G-5464G50Mnks (Intel Core i5 460M, 17.3")
» Acer Aspire 7745G-5464G50Mnks - External Review

Acer Aspire 7745G-5464G64Bnks (Intel Core i5 460M, 17.3")
» Acer Aspire 7745G-5464G64Bnks - External Review

Acer Aspire 7745G-728G1TBiks (Intel Core i7 720QM, 17.3")
» Acer Aspire 7745G-728G1TBiks - External Review

Acer Aspire 8942G-434G50Mi (Intel Core i5 430M, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8942G-434G50Mi - External Review

Acer Aspire 8942G-526G64Bi (Intel Core i5 520M, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8942G-526G64Bi - External Review

Acer Aspire 8942G-728G128TWn (Intel Core i7 720QM, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8942G-728G128TWn - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G (Intel Core i7 820QM, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8943G - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G-624G1TMn (Intel Core i7 620M, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8943G-624G1TMn - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G-6782 (Intel Core i7 720QM, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8943G-6782 - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G-72161.28TWn (Intel Core i7 720QM, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8943G-72161.28TWn - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G-728G1.28TWn (Intel Core i7 720QM, 18.4")
» Review Acer Aspire 8943G Notebook - Review
» Acer Aspire 8943G-728G1.28TWn - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G-7748G1.5TWns (Intel Core i7 720QM, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8943G-7748G1.5TWns - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G-9319 (Intel Core i7 740QM, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8943G-9319 - External Review

Acer Aspire 8943G-9429 (Intel Core i7 740QM, 18.4")
» Acer Aspire 8943G-9429 - External Review

HP EliteBook 8560w (Intel Core i7 2820QM, 15.6")
» HP EliteBook 8560w - External Review

HP Envy 17 (Intel Core i7 720QM, 17.3")
» HP Envy 17 - External Review

HP Envy 17-1050ea (Intel Core i7 720QM, 17.3")
» HP Envy 17-1050ea - External Review

HP Envy 17-1117ef (Intel Core i7 720QM, 17.3")
» HP Envy 17-1117ef - External Review

HP Envy 17-1190eg (Intel Core i7 720QM, 17,3")
» Review HP Envy 17-1190eg Notebook - Review
» HP Envy 17-1190eg - External Review

HP Envy 17-1195ea (Intel Core i7 720QM, 17.3")
» HP Envy 17-1195ea - External Review

HP Envy 17-3D (Intel Core i5 580M, 17.3")
» HP Envy 17-3D - External Review

HP Pavilion dv8-1250er (Intel Core i7 720QM, 17.3")
» HP Pavilion dv8-1250er - External Review

MSI GX640 (Intel Core i7 720QM, 15.4")
» MSI GX640 - External Review

MSI GX640-i5447LW7P (Intel Core i5 430M, 15.4")
» Review MSI GX640-i5447LW7P Notebook - Review
» MSI GX640-i5447LW7P - External Review

Packard Bell EasyNote LX86-JO-022GE (Intel Core i5 450M, 17.3")
» Review Packard Bell EasyNote LX86 Notebook - Review
» Packard Bell EasyNote LX86-JO-022GE - External Review

» Comparison of GPUs
Detailled list of all laptop GPUs with a short description. Classified and sorted by performance.

» Benchmark List
Sortable and restrainable list of all GPUs with benchmarks (e.g. 3DMarks).

» Notebook Gaming List
Which game can be played with my graphics card.

Class 1
GeForce GTX 590
GeForce GTX 580
Radeon HD 6970
GeForce GTX 570
GeForce GTX 480
GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Radeon HD 6870
GeForce GTX 470
Radeon HD 5850
GeForce GTX 460 768MB
Radeon HD 6790
Radeon HD 5770
GeForce GTX 550 Ti
GeForce GTS 450
Radeon HD 4850
Radeon HD 5670
Class 2
GeForce GT 240
GeForce GT 430
7590M *
Radeon HD 5570
Radeon HD 6550D *
GeForce GT 220
Radeon HD 6450 GDDR5
Class 3
Radeon HD 4350
GeForce G 107M *
Chrome9HD *
Class 4
Class 5
Class 6
SGX543MP2 *
Mali-400 MP *
PowerVR SGX540 *
PowerVR SGX535
unknown *

* Approximate position of the graphics adapter

> Notebook / Laptop Reviews and News > FAQ / Tips / Technics > Comparison of Laptop Graphics Cards > ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850
Author: Klaus Hinum (Update: 2012-01-25)