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ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 is a high-end DirectX 11 capable graphics card by AMD for laptops. At the time of announcement, (Jan 2010) the 5870 paired with GDDR5 memory should be the fastest laptop GPU available, excluding SLI or CrossFire solutions. Technically, the chip is based on the desktop Radeon HD 5770 (RV840) with a slower clock rate.

The memory interface of the Mobility 5870 is composed 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 (or 512 MB GDDR3). If (G)DDR3 is used by the laptop vendor, the performance of the 5870 will become bottlenecked by a noticeable degree.

The HD 5870 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, the approximately 1.04 billion transistors of the 5870 offer a theroretic computation power of up to 1.12 TFLOPS. 

According to AMD, the HD 5000 series has also been improved with regards to general computing (as opposed to the HD 4000 series). Therefore, the performance of ATI stream, OpenCL, and DirectCompute 11 applications should be noticeably better.

Compared to the previous generation such as with the Mobility Radeon HD 4870, the HD 5870 should be about 20% faster, at least according to AMD. HD 5870 cards with GDDR3 memory are expected to have lower performance gains. The gaming performance of the 5870 should be sufficient for all current games (2009-2010) in high resolution and high detail settings. The following games should run fluently in 1920x1200 with 4x Antialiasing: Left4Dead, UT3, Devil May Cry 4, Far Cry 2, ET:Quake Wars, and Wolfenstein MP (over 30 fps according to AMD slides - see below). Compared to the previous leader in the mobile segment, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M, the new HD 5870 should be noticeably faster.

The Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series includes an improved video processor (UVD2) to decode HD videos with the graphics card. Assuming adequate memory bandwidth, the new version can decode two HD streams simultaneously (e.g., for Blu-Ray picture in picture). Beginning from Flash 10.1 Beta, the 5000 series can also accelerate Flash HD videos (e.g., Youtube).

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

Similar to the desktop HD 5000 series, the Mobility HD 5870 also supports Eyefinity to connect up to 6 monitors on a computer. Of course, this depends on how many monitor outputs the laptop can physically support. Furthermore, it appears that only laptops with DisplayPort outputs (e.g., HP Envy 17) can support Eyefinity.

Due to the high power consumption of the Mobility Radeon HD 5870, the GPU is only suited for large laptops with good (and possibly loud) cooling solutions. According to AMD, the performance per watt and the idle power consumption have both been improved thanks to Memory Clock Scaling and Clock Gating. Furthermore, the chip supports PowerXpress (with AMD chipset) and Switchable Graphics (Intel) to switch between dedicated and integrated graphics.

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 should perform somewhere between a Radeon HD 5750 and 5770 according to the shader count of the desktop 5770 and the clock rate of the desktop 5750.

Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series

Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire compare 1600 @ 0.7 GHz128 Bit @ 1000 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 5870 800 @ 0.7 GHz128 Bit @ 1000 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 5850 compare 800 @ 0.63 GHz128 Bit @ 2000 MHz
Mobility Radeon HD 5830 compare 800 @ 0.5 GHz128 Bit @ 800 MHz
CodenameBroadway-XT
ArchitectureTerascale 2
Pipelines800 - unified
Core Speed700 MHz
Memory Speed1000 MHz
Memory Bus Width128 Bit
Memory TypeDDR3, GDDR3, GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory1024 MB
Shared Memoryno
APIDirectX 11, Shader 5.0
Power Consumption50 Watt
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
Information1.12 TFLOPS

Benchmarks

3DMark Vantage
3DM Vant. Perf. total +
3DMark Vantage - 3DM Vant. Perf. total
min: 7260     avg: 7929     median: 7999 (2%)     max: 8548 Points
3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX +
3DMark Vantage - 3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX
min: 7382     avg: 7614     median: 7616 (4%)     max: 7903 Points
3DMark 03 - 3DMark 03 - Standard
min: 37780     avg: 38524     median: 38290 (20%)     max: 39415 Points
3DMark 05 - 3DMark 05 - Standard
min: 17224     avg: 18044     median: 18052.5 (20%)     max: 18983 Points
3DMark 06 3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x1024 +
3DMark 06
min: 12356     avg: 12863     median: 12830.5 (17%)     max: 13534 Points
3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x768 +
3DMark 06
min: 12304     avg: 12363     median: 12362.5 (16%)     max: 12421 Points
Cinebench R10 Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit) +
Cinebench R10 - Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit)
min: 5033     avg: 6270     median: 6609 (5%)     max: 6957 points
Cinebench R11.5 Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64 Bit +
Cinebench R11.5 - Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64 Bit
min: 21.72     avg: 32.6     median: 28.4 (9%)     max: 44.39 fps
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
red legend - Average benchmark values for this graphics card
* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance

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 detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Fifa 11

Fifa 11

2010
low 800x600
264 264.3 ~ 264 fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
156 181.6 ~ 169 fps    + Compare
high 1360x768
126.8 130 ~ 128 fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
90.3  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Mafia 2

Mafia 2

2010
low 800x600
68.9  fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
65.7  fps    + Compare
high 1360x768
60.7  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
41.1  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
low 1024x768
166 166 170 ~ 167 fps    + Compare
med. 1360x768
61.8 63 66 ~ 64 fps    + Compare
high 1360x768
56 56 58 ~ 57 fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
37.2 45 ~ 41 fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
low 800x600
85.3  fps    + Compare
med. 1360x768
53.5  fps    + Compare
high 1600x900
30.5  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
10.9  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings med..
low 1024x768
104.2  fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
med. 1366x768
80.5  fps    + Compare
high 1366x768
58.6  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
30.9 32.7 33.1 ~ 32 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
low 800x600
161  fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
med. 1024x768
78 78.2 79.7 ~ 79 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
high 1366x768
66.3  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
48.7 50.7 51.1 ~ 50 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Risen

Risen

2009
low 800x600
108.8  fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
56.2 59.5 ~ 58 fps    + Compare
high 1366x768
40.9  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
31.6  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5

2009
low 800x600
97.9  fps    + Compare
high 1360x768
77.5  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
56.1  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Need for Speed Shift

Need for Speed Shift

2009
low 800x600
57.8  fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
47.1 54.1 59.4 ~ 54 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
high 1366x768
52.3  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
41.5 43.3 ~ 42 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Colin McRae: DIRT 2

Colin McRae: DIRT 2

2009
low 800x600
112.9  fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
72.8 76.2 94.7 ~ 81 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
high 1360x768
48.5  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
29.5 30.9 33.8 ~ 31 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Anno 1404

Anno 1404

2009
low 1024x768
131.8  fps    + Compare
ultra 1280x1024
81  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
F.E.A.R. 2

F.E.A.R. 2

2009
low 800x600
192  fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
110  fps    + Compare
high 1280x1024
84 109.7 ~ 97 fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
41 63.1 ~ 52 fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2

2008
low 640x480
117.6 118 122 ~ 119 fps    + Compare
high 1024x768
82.9 83 83.1 ~ 83 fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
33 33.6 58.1 ~ 42 fps    + Compare
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings ultra.
Crysis - GPU Benchmark

Crysis - GPU Benchmark

2007
low 1024x768
116 142 ~ 129 fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
67 72.6 74.9 ~ 72 fps    + Compare
high 1024x768
50 56.1 56.2 ~ 54 fps    + Compare