ATI dropped a bomb on the graphics card world with the Sapphire HD 5870 so it would only be a short while before the follow-up came out in the form of the Sapphire HD 5850. Based on the same "Cypress" RV870 core the HD 5850 should offer performance that scales well in games and some much needed shoring up of the performance in the $250 price range. The Sapphire HD 5850 is built using the same 40nm process and comes equipped with the same 2.15 Billion transistors and 1GB of GDDR5 memory as the HD 5870. Clock speeds come in at a reasonable 1000MHz on the memory and 725MHz on the core giving up a hefty amount of speed to the 5870 in the clock speed department. As the second DX 11 video card to market ATI is ramping up a full DX 11 lineup for the future of gaming even though the DX 11 titles have not made it to market yet. The HD 5850 has more in store as ATI is making the move to compete with Nvidia in the GPU compute market while offering improved graphics performance in DX9/10/10.1 titles.Let's find out if the Sapphire HD 5850 has the same thoroughbred heritage as the HD 5870 and how well it competes against the latest video cards from Nvidia and the last generation of ATI video cards. If performance is close to that delivered by the 5870, then ATI and its partners including the biggest of them all, Sapphire, has delivered a one / two punch that currently puts the cards at the top of the performance ladder! Let's get to it!
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