Ready to 
Fashionably late, the HD 5850 arrives
Peter G.
September 30, 2009 9:30 PM ET in Tech
Robert Hallock gave us the full breakdown on the new Radeon HD 5870 and the 5800-series in general, but missing was the traditional entry level part, the HD 5850. The fancy card came out without the HD 5850 in tow, walking the red carpet alone.
So a week later, the HD 5850 finally shows up late to the party. Call it a considerate gesture to let the HD 5870 have its time in the spotlight. Or, call it a pretentious move on ATI’s part. Just remember, it’s not being pretentious when you’ve got the skills to back it up.
The HD 5850 has the skills.
“The Radeon HD 5850 manages to outshine the fastest single-GPU GeForce card overall while costing less, drawing less power, and producing less noise. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Nvidia cut prices in the near future, but in any case, the 5850 is hands-down the second-fastest single-GPU graphics card on the market.” — The Tech Report
The card is a shorter than the HD 5870, quiet enough, and a heck of a performer. For $260 you get performance just a notch lower than the HD 5870, but still with all the benefits of current generation DX11 hardware. The numbers are all there. If you need your daily fix of graphs and numbers, we’re partial to the Tech Report review above, along with the following.
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