Introduction

Last week AMD released their new HD 5800 Series. While the HD 5870 was a great hit, the HD 5850 was nowhere to be seen, except in our HD 5870 review where we simulated its performance.

Today we present you our review of the HIS 5850. The HD 5850 is based on the same Cypress GPU like the HD 5870, it has the same GDDR5 memory and supports all the features its bigger brother has. The only spec differences are a reduced shader count of 1440 (minus 10%), reduced clocks of 725 MHz core (-15%) and 1000 MHz memory (-17%). As a result the card is roughly 15% slower than the HD 5870, but costs over 40% less, making it an ideal candidate for the price/performance aware user.

The HIS HD 5850 follows the AMD reference design specifications to the letter, and simply adds the included accessories and the sticker on the cooler.

Packaging

HIS is shipping their card in quite an unconventional package. The form factor isn't your average VGA card box as far as size goes. On the front, back and the sides you find additional product information like specs highlights and system requirements.

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• DVI to analog adapter
• Dirt 2 coupon (for Steam version)
• Driver CD + Manual
• 2x PCI-E power cable
• CrossFire bridge
• HIS Gamer's Tool Kit (universal screwdriver etc.)

The Card

The HIS HD 5850 is an AMD reference design card, which means it uses the same PCB, components, specifications and cooler as the AMD reference card. The cooler looks very similar that of the HD 5870 Series, except that it is not as long and is made from a slightly different kind of plastic. Unlike the HD 5870 there is no backplate, which helps reduce cost.


From left to right: Radeon HD 5870, HIS HD 5850, HD 4870, HD 4870 X2. As you can see, the space requirements of the HD 5850 are modest, the card is essentially as big as a HD 4870.


While the Radeon HD 4850 came as a single-slot design, the HD 5850 uses a dual slot cooler. This helps with cooling performance but is not required in my opinion. I am confident we will see single slot HD 5850 cards in the near future.


The card has two DVI ports, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort. This is just one of many output configurations that are possible on the new cards, thanks to the overhauled display output logic. Basically the card can drive six TMDS signals that can be combined in any way (a dual-link DVI consumes two TMDS lines).
For HDMI Audio, NVIDIA requires you to feed an external audio source, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio, to the card via SPDIF cable. AMD on the other hand has integrated a sound device inside their GPUs which is the easier solution for most users. Also AMD's integrated sound device has been upgraded to support HDMI 1.3a which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit.


Crossfire dual, triple and quad configurations are supported to improve performance even further.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.