The XFX HD 5850 is the second line of cards to come out of the AMD 5-series cards. The die still has the same transistor count as the 5870 Cypress core, with a few processing units disabled to get 1440 stream processors while the ROPs were untouched at 32. The core speed is 725 MHz versus the 850 MHz reference clock of the HD 5870. The XFX HD 5850 also has 1GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus, these are running at 1000 MHz (4000MHz effectively). The smaller 40nm fabrication process allows more power to be packed into a chip, and generally equates to cooler running and less energy consumption on the GPU; the 4-series cards left off at 55nm for the most part. The heat sink and expansion slot ports are identical looking to the HD 5870 save for the shorter design - about an inch shorter. The 5-series cards such as the XFX HD 5850 being reviewed support the soon to be released DirectX 11. This card also supports the new ATI Eyefinity technology that allows multiple monitors to span games across them. With a similar Volterra VRM design, this card is also core volt-modifiable through software just like the XFX HD 5870 was.As long as the petite XFX HD 5850 doesn't disappoint in the benchmarks, then there is a huge chance that this card will fit very well in the price-to-performance segment. With the only difference between it and a HD 5870 being some processing power and overall length, it will be interesting to see how different they are and if the 5850 can catch up in performance.