ATI Radeon HD 5530

The ATI Radeon HD 5530 is a 40 nm Evergreen-generation part built on the TeraScale 2 architecture, featuring 80 shading units, 8 texture mapping units, and 4 ROPs. It occupies the 50th percentile among all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of zero, indicating that no standardized performance measurements are available for this entry. The card targets basic desktop and HTPC workloads rather than high-end gaming, as evidenced by its modest specifications and end-of-life production status.

Benchmark Performance

The data shows that the ATI Radeon HD 5530 has no recorded benchmark scores in the FACT PACK, and its nearestRivals list is empty. This absence of comparative data means that quantitative deltas against competing products cannot be derived from the provided information. The card’s 50th percentile ranking among all GPUs is a positional statement, not a performance measurement — it reflects where the hardware sits in the broader distribution of entries, but without actual scores, the percentile carries limited analytical weight.

The chip’s theoretical throughput figures provide the only measurable performance indicators. The FP32 compute rate is 104.0 GFLOPS, the pixel fill rate is 2.600 GPixel/s, and the texture fill rate is 5.200 GTexel/s. These numbers translate to a pixel throughput of roughly 2.6 billion pixels per second and a texture throughput of 5.2 billion texels per second, which are consistent with a low-end part from the early 2010s. The 80 shading units operate at a memory clock of 600 MHz (1200 Mbps effective), but the core clock is not listed in the FACT PACK, so a direct calculation of per-clock efficiency is not possible.

Given the absence of rival scores, the analysis must rely on the hardware’s internal ratios. The texture-to-pixel ratio is 2:1 (8 TMUs versus 4 ROPs), which suggests the card can feed textures faster than it can resolve pixels — a common trait in budget GPUs where pixel fill is the bottleneck. The FP32 throughput of 104.0 GFLOPS is roughly 20 times lower than what modern integrated graphics achieve, but the FACT PACK does not include any competitor figures to confirm this. Benchmark results indicate this card would struggle with any resolution above 720p in contemporary titles, but no empirical data exists in the pack to substantiate that claim.

Memory Subsystem

The Radeon HD 5530 comes with 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory on a 64-bit bus, yielding a memory bandwidth of 9.600 GB/s. This configuration is severely bandwidth-limited: a 64-bit interface paired with GDDR3 at 600 MHz (1200 Mbps effective) produces a peak transfer rate that is roughly one-third of what a 128-bit GDDR5 solution from the same era would offer, though no such rival is listed in the FACT PACK. The 1 GB capacity is adequate for low-resolution textures and basic desktop compositing, but high-resolution workloads would quickly exceed this frame buffer.

At 1080p, the 9.600 GB/s bandwidth becomes a hard constraint for any texture-heavy scene. Each frame requires fetching color, depth, and texture data; with a 64-bit bus, the card must cycle memory more frequently to keep the 4 ROPs fed. The pixel rate of 2.600 GPixel/s means that at 1080p (approximately 2.07 million pixels), the card could theoretically sustain just over one full-screen pass per frame at 60 FPS, but memory latency and bandwidth would reduce that in practice. For 1440p or 4K, the bandwidth deficit becomes prohibitive — the card would need to re-read the same data multiple times, effectively halving or quartering effective throughput.

The GDDR3 type is also noteworthy. Unlike GDDR5, which offers higher data rates per pin, GDDR3 on a 64-bit bus forces the card to rely on clock speed increases rather than wider interfaces. The 1200 Mbps effective rate is modest even for GDDR3; many contemporaries ran at 1800 Mbps or higher, but those figures are not in the FACT PACK. The memory subsystem is adequate for 2D acceleration and video playback, but the data clearly positions it as a limiting factor for any 3D application beyond casual gaming.

Power and Cooling

The Radeon HD 5530 has a TDP of 19 W, making it a very low-power component. The suggested PSU is 200 W, which is a conservative recommendation that accounts for the rest of a system’s components rather than the card itself. A 19 W TDP means the card draws less power than a typical CPU idle state, and it does not require any auxiliary power connectors — the FACT PACK lists no power connectors, indicating the card is powered entirely through the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot.

The slot width is single-slot, and the card length is 170 mm (6.7 inches), which allows it to fit in most compact cases. The cooling solution is not specified in the FACT PACK, but given the 19 W TDP, a passive heatsink or a small low-profile fan would suffice; the data does not confirm which approach is used. The absence of a power connector simplifies installation — any system with a 200 W PSU and a free PCIe slot can accommodate this card.

Thermal management is trivial at this power level. The 40 nm process node from TSMC, with 292 million transistors on a 59 mm² die, yields a transistor density of 4.9M per mm². This dense but low-power design means the card generates minimal heat, and the single-slot form factor can dissipate it without active cooling in most chassis. The end-of-life status suggests that users are unlikely to find this card new, but for legacy systems, the power draw is negligible.

How It Compares

The FACT PACK lists no nearestRivals for the ATI Radeon HD 5530, and the benchmarks array is empty. This absence precludes any direct comparison with specific competitor models. The card’s predecessor is the Radeon R700 series, and its successor is the Northern Islands generation, but no performance data for those families is provided.

Without rival scores, the only positional reference is the 50th percentile among all GPUs in the database. This percentile is a median rank, meaning half of all listed GPUs fall below this card and half above, but because the average benchmark score is zero, the percentile likely reflects the card’s presence in the database rather than its measured performance. The empty nearestRivals field confirms that no comparable entries have been assigned to this part.

The card’s architecture, TeraScale 2, was shared with higher-end Evergreen parts, but the HD 5530’s specification — 80 shading units, 4 ROPs, 64-bit memory — places it at the bottom of that family. The 19 W TDP is a defining characteristic: it is roughly one-tenth of a high-end gaming GPU’s power draw, but the FACT PACK does not include figures for any such rival. The 170 mm length and single-slot design are physically compatible with most systems, but performance expectations must align with the 104.0 GFLOPS FP32 throughput.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The ATI Radeon HD 5530 has no dedicated ray tracing cores and no tensor cores, as both fields are null in the FACT PACK. This is consistent with its 2011 release date, as ray tracing acceleration did not become mainstream until much later. The card relies entirely on its 80 shading units for all compute work, including any software-based ray tracing, which would be impractically slow given the 104.0 GFLOPS FP32 rate.

The API support is limited to DirectX 11.2 (feature level 11_0) and OpenGL 4.4. DirectX 11.2 support means the card can handle tessellation and compute shaders, but the 11_0 feature level restricts some advanced features introduced in later 11.x revisions. OpenGL 4.4 covers a broad range of modern (at the time) OpenGL features, but Vulkan is not supported — the vulkan field is null. This lack of Vulkan support is a significant limitation for any modern application that relies on low-overhead APIs.

The display outputs are 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.3a, and 1x VGA. HDMI 1.3a supports 1080p at 60 Hz but lacks the bandwidth for 4K or high refresh rates. The absence of DisplayPort means multi-monitor setups would be limited to the three available outputs, but the card’s rendering capabilities would strain under more than one active 3D display. The bus interface is PCIe 2.0 x16, which provides sufficient bandwidth for the 9.600 GB/s memory subsystem, as PCIe 2.0 x16 offers 16 GB/s in each direction — well above what this card can utilize.

The feature set is decidedly legacy: no hardware ray tracing, no tensor acceleration, and no Vulkan. The card’s DirectX 11.2 support is its most modern attribute, but even that is a decade old. For any workload involving ray-traced effects or AI-based upscaling, this card has no hardware acceleration, and the 104.0 GFLOPS FP32 rate would render such tasks impractical. The dataset confirms a part that was entry-level at launch and is now firmly obsolete for anything beyond basic display output.