The Radeon HD 5850 is the smaller brother of the
5870 and it has the same 40-nm Cypress processor that
powers the 5870. One thing that separates the 5850 from the 5870 is that two of
the Cypress 20 SIMD arrays and two of the texture units that are with each
array have been disabled. Another are the clock speeds.
AMD also reduced the clock speeds of the 5850. The 5870 GPU clock runs at 850 MHz with
a memory of 1200 MHz (4.8 Gbps data rate), and the 5850 runs at a 725 MHz GPU clock with a 1000 MHz (4
Gbps) memory RAM.
They both have the same type of GDDR5 memory. Both
the 5850 and the 5870 come with 1 GB of it as well which is nice. 1 GB should
be the standard for a high end card nowadays in my opinion.
The 5850 has a 9.5" PCB unlike the 10.5"
5870. This will make it much easier for installing in certain cases that might
lack the extra space a longer card would take up. The 5850's PCB is the same
length as the 4870 actually. To power the card you will need a pair of six-pin
PCI Express power connectors. The same as with the 4870 as well. As you will
see in the pictures the 5850 and the 4870 look very similar from an outside
view.
The port configuration is the same as the 5870. There
is a pair of vertically stacked DVI outputs and then you have a DisplayPort and HDMI 1.3a connector slots.
With ATI's Eyefinity technology with DisplayPort connectivity one could hook up a total of 6 (yes six) independent display outputs simultaneously if one so desired. All this on a single GPU!
