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Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5

Based on 14 reviews

Excellent:

12
Good:

2
Average:

0
Bad:

0

Pros

Fast 3D gaming performance for the price.
Two bundled games.
The highest performance yet for a mid-range gaming card.
Two-heat-pipe cooler is very effective.
Silent fan.
Strong performance in games and benchmarks.
Nice combination of connections out back: 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort, ATI Eye.
Second-fastest DirectX 11 graphics accelerator.
Consumes only 31W at idle and 157W under full load.

Cons

Warranty support requires return to retailer.
Only a two year warranty.
Not much sets the Sapphire version apart from other manufacturer's offerings.
Supposed to include a Dirt2 coupon, but neither card here has one.
Fan exhausts some heated air back into case.
Maximum post-processing Anti Aliasing is limited to 8x.
Expensive.

By Good Gear Guide on August 13, 2010

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB boasts plenty of power, with many of the same features as the 5870. The clincher, though, is the price. Four hundred dollars is fantastic for a card hard on the heels of a GTX 295 or HD 5870. If you're shopping...

90
By Overclock3D on February 21, 2010

So it would seem that once again, Sapphire has presented us with yet another fantastic product. It should be mentioned of course that much of the credit really goes to ATi as unlike many of Sapphire's offerings, their Radeon HD 5850 is based...

77
By Atomic MPC on February 02, 2010

Good performance, value and...

88
By Hardware Canucks on January 19, 2010

Personally, I’m of the opinion that both Sapphire’s HD 5770 and HD 5850 provide excellent value for your money by offering high-end performance coupled with excellent efficiency. Both of these cards have truly set the bar high and may...

-
By iXBT Labs on December 12, 2009

First of all, let me remind you that all RADEON HD 5xxx cards support the new DirectX 11 API, higher-quality anisotropic filtering, triple-monitor configurations, as well as other features described in our baseline review. RADEON HD 5850 is the...

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By XSReviews on November 19, 2009

It has to be said that the Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 really doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. Throughout all testing, synthetic and gaming, the card consistently achieves high, solid frame rates and what’s even more impressive is that the...

100
By Rage3D on November 18, 2009

Here you can see the edges of the raw performance the HD5970 offers. It's marketed as the world's fastest graphics card - a name it lives up to quite easily, and it looks like there is no competition on the horizon until at least Q1 2010....

-
By Maximum PC on November 16, 2009

Great performance at a midrange price As with Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5870, the company’s HD 5850 card ships with coupons for two games: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Sapphire’s HD 5850 delivers a stock Radeon HD 5850, with its...

90
By ThinkComputers on November 16, 2009

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 beat the 1GB GTX 260 quite soundly in every test. The overclock gave me more of a performance boost than I would have expected from a 5% overclock, in all but one test the gains were significant. Even in the other test, a...

100
By Good Gear Guide on November 10, 2009

While the 5870 is all about showcasing innovation, the Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB also boasts plenty of power, with many of the same features. The clincher, though, is the price....

90