GIGABYTE HD 5850 Video Card Review :: Card

Card

Sapphire logo

Fan

PCI Express

GIGABYTE uses the reference design almost to a tee with their HD 5850 card. The cooler on the front of the card is the same as on the other HD 5850 cards I’ve reviewed. GIGABYTE has a slightly differently designed cover for the cooler with two cut out silver pieces, but otherwise it’s the same. There is a 47-fin fan on the right side of the card. The GIGABYTE logo on the top and the ATI RADEON logo on the bottom silver piece.

Back of card

GPU Mount

Rear of Cooler

6-pin power

The back of the cooler has two 6-pin power connectors to provide extra power over that of the PCI Express x16 slot’s 150W maximum. The top of the card has two Crossfire bridge connectors which allow the card to connect to up to three other HD 5850 video cards to provide greater performance in games and applications that support Crossfire. The rear of the card has the Part Number and Serial Number Stickers as well as the GPU mounting bracket.

Crossfire bridges

Top View

Head on view

IO

The card comes with 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1GHZ or 4GHz effective. With a 128-bit memory bus interface the HD 5850 has a memory bandwidth of 128GB/second. The I/O bracket contains two Dual-Link DVI connectors, a HDMI connector and a Display Port connector, allowing up to three monitors to be utilized with this card if the DP connector is utilized. The HDMI standard is common for many HDTVs and the DP is the replacement for the DVI connection. You can of course use the connections with different monitors if you use an adapter.