ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5750 vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

The AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is a middle class DirectX 11 graphics card for laptops. Its based on the Madison (LE, LP or Pro) chip and is produced in 40nm. Like its predecessor, the Mobility Radeon 4650, the HD 5650 features a 128 Bit memory bus for dedicated DDR3 and GDDR3 memory chips. GDDR5 is  not supported on the HD 5650 (only in the higher clocked versions like the 5750 or 5770 cards based on the same chip).

In our benchmarks with the HD 5650, the GPU is performing on a level with the previous Mobility Radeon HD 4670 or the Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M (with DDR3 graphics memory). This means the performance is sufficient for high details in nearly all DirectX 10 games (only Crysis and GTA4 are not fluently playable in high details - see gaming list below). Upcoming and current DirectX 11 games (like DIRT2) may not run in full detail settings. That means some of the new DirectX 11 features (Tesselation e.g.) may not run fluently on this gaming graphics adapter. Currently the HD 5650 is a good gaming pick for well priced laptops with a 15 inch screen and a resolution of about 1366x768.

The Mobility HD 5650 supports Avivo HD to accelerate HD videos using the graphics card. The improved UVD2 processor in the DirectX11 models of the Radeon HD 5000 series is able to decode up to two streams in parallel (if the card offers enough memory bandwidth). It is not clear if the HD 5650 using (G)DDR3 offers enough bandwidth for this task. 

Another novelty of the HD 5650 is the possibility to transport HD Audio formats (8-channel Dolby True HD, DTS Master) over the HDMI port.

Thanks to Eyevision, up to 6 monitors can be used with the HD 5650 in 3D and 2D applications (if the laptop features DisplayPort outputs). In most laptops this is not the case, and therefore only 2 monitors are supported at a time.

The power consumption should be (due to the modern 40nm process in 2009) relatively low and according to rumors about 10-15 Watt.

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the Mobilty 5650 is similar to a ATI Radeon 5570 with lower core clock speeds and slower memory speeds (the desktop 5570 is similar to the Mobility 5770).

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5750

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5750 is a mobile performance class graphic card for laptops with native DirectX 11 support. Despite the name, the HD chip does not stem from the desktop HD 5750 but is just a faster Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with GDDR5 support and therefore 400 shader cores. Compared to the HD 5730, the 5750 has GDDR5 support, but features less core speed. As the manufacturer can also use DDR3, the HD 5750 may even be slower than a HD 5730 GPU.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 is a mobile performance class graphic card for laptops with native DirectX 11 support. Despite the name, the HD chip does not stem from the desktop HD 5700 series but is just a faster Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 400 shader cores. Compared to the Mobility HD 5750, the 5730 has no GDDR5 support, but a higher core speed.

As the other HD 5600/5700 cards, the HD 5730 offers Avivo HD for HD video acceleration, 8-channel HD audio output over HDMI 1.3, Eyefinity for up to 6 monitors (if the laptop features DisplayPorts) and Direct Compute 11 support.

The performance should be a bit better than a GeForce GTS 250M in the middle-performance class. This means all modern games (of 2009) should run fluently on this graphics card in medium to high detail settings with lower resolution settings (e.g. 1366x768).

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the HD 5730 should be similar to a Radeon 5570 (except the desktop version uses faster GDDR5).