The HD5850 is a dedicated graphics card produced by ATI Radeon and launched in 2009. Since 2010 the brand has been renamed as AMD Radeon. The HD5850 was designed for use in high-end PCs and is part of the HD series, which was produced to provide high-definition graphics capability for videos and gaming.
Speed and Memory
The core processor speed for the Radeon HD5850 is 725 megahertz and it has a memory clock speed of 1 GHz. It uses 1GB of GDDR5 RAM and the memory bandwidth, which is how fast the card accesses its RAM, is 128GB per second.
ATI Powerplay
The HD5850 uses ATI's PowerPlay technology. This is a power-management tool that can conserve power when there's little demand on the graphics processor. This technology will still allow full, maximum-performance functionality of the graphics card when performing more demanding tasks such as watching videos or playing games. The PowerPlay technology is also designed to work with multi-GPU systems -- systems with more than one graphics processing unit -- and is available for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.
Microsoft DirectX
The HD5850 supports DirectX version 11. DirectX is a suite of programs designed by Microsoft to enhance multimedia, gaming and video with the Microsoft operating systems. DirectX adjusts how the graphics card functions to suit the other hardware capabilities of your PC.
Avivo HD Capabilty
ATI's Avivo HD technology provides an enhanced environment for connecting your computer to an external device like your TV or monitor using an HDMI cable. This technology enables smooth playback for HD quality video with sharp images and vibrant colors.
OpenGL Support
OpenGL is a system integrated into Windows operating systems. OpenGL provides optimized system drivers to improve resource management so that the best balance is achieved between the graphics processing and other system processes. OpenGL can issue commands to the operating system to achieve this. The ATI Radeon HD5850 is able to communicate using these commands while performing 2-D and 3-D graphics processing tasks.
Tags: graphics card, graphics processing, Radeon HD5850, operating systems, PowerPlay technology