A Closer Look

AMD's HD 5850 cooler is a smaller, less powerful, more reasonably priced version of the HD 5870 cooler. It uses a large heatsink that is connected to the copper baseplate via heatipes.


Operation of the card requires two six-pin PCI-E power connectors. Based on our power consumption numbers I am sure that this card would work with a single six-pin connector too, but better safe than sorry. What I don't like, however, is the placement of the power plugs. On the HD 5870 they are on the long side of the PCB (like most NVIDIA cards) which makes them much easier to access and also helps with space limitations.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G10325FE-HC04. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective). Those are the same chips like on the big brother HD 5870 - get ready for some serious overclocking.


The GPU voltage is managed by a Volterra VT1165MF voltage controller which is I2C capable enabling software voltmods.


This AMD's new Cypress GPU, it comes with a whopping 2154 million transistors and is produced on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. The Cypress die size is 334 mm².