Recent discussion on Reddit brought attention to the 2009 AMD Radeon HD 5850. This focuses on its historical price-to-performance and value. This is interesting for several reasons.
Historical pricing highlights the shift in GPU value over the last decade
It points out the difference between the lower price high-end of the past and today's struggle to even have an entry level that's comparable in value. For people interested in hardward economic trends and even retro hardware building, it offers some perspective on changes in purchasing power over the last 10+ years.
- Architecture: Cypress
- Memory: 1GB GDDR5
- API Support: DirectX 11
- Launch Price: $259
The Radeon HD 5850 came out in 2009. It was a high end solution at the time from AMD using the Cypress architecture. It had 1GB of GDDR5.
It supported DirectX 11 and was "future-proof" at the time. The HD 5850 filled the gap between the HD 5770, which was the mid-range, and the HD 5870, the flagship solution at the time for AMD.
According to historical performance tests, the HD 5850 performed at about 90% of the performance of the top end, the HD 5870. This provided a high-end experience without having to pay flagship pricing. The architecture and memory configuration on the HD 5850 served a strong base for 1080p gaming at the time.
In 2009, the Radeon HD 5850 was priced at 259 USD (roughly $259), and the HD 5770 was priced at 159 USD (roughly $159). Commenters suggest that if you factor inflation, these nominal amounts translate to more than $400 in current pricing. This comparison is important to point out how much the GPU pricing has changed and consumer expectations over the last 15 years.
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