ATi 5850/5870 review thread

[Tempered81]

One thing that?s very clear in these benchmarks is that as things currently stand, the 5850 has made the GTX 285 irrelevant (again). The 5850 is anywhere between 9% and 16% faster depending on the resolution, cheaper by at least $35 as of Tuesday morning (with everything besides a single BFG model going for +$70 or more), and features DirectX11. The 5850 is a card that manages to ? if at times barely ? outclass the GTX285 in performance. If you?ve been waiting for a price shakeup, this is what you?ve been waiting for.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650&p=14

how about buy it today for $259?

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/...11224&prodlist=froogle

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: Tempered81
Cant beat the deal... cooler quieter, 40nm, dx11, eyefinity (missing 160 shaders that are 90% unused anyway). shorter, drawback is the lighter 3-heatpipe fansink. has the new ball bearing fan. 4.ns ddr5 5gbps samsung ecc memory, cypress core, kills a gtx285 and costs $259.

It doesn't kill the gtx 285, it's more around it, sometimes faster ( mostly ) sometimes even loosing a bit, but it does make it useless at it's price tag. Nvidia has to drop its price, or else it won't sell at all.
But still, 5850 it's like they say in the conclusion: " a little gem".

 

[RobertR1]

Hardocp's review: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/30/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5850_video_card_review

 

[Udgnim]

curious to see what the 5850 will be able to OC to after some utilities are released allowing OC speeds beyond the CCC Overdrive limit

it'll probably be one hell of a value OCed

 

[BFG10K]

Mistaken post.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: error8
It doesn't kill the gtx 285, it's more around it, sometimes faster ( mostly ) sometimes even loosing a bit

From the AT review it didn't lose once to the 285 and even in the techreport review it only lost in Wolfenstein.

 

[Gikaseixas]

5850, WOW what a card, i want 2 of them. They should make a 5850 X2 too

 

[StinkyPinky]

5850 is a thing of beauty. Nice reviews

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Its good to see AMD nailed the price/performance spot again with this card... I remember they always used to have quite crappy mid-high cards for the price (1800XL comes to mind), but it seems they really are sticking to the 4800 series line of thinking

 

[nyker96]

the 5850 is a overclocking monster, fireing squad was able to get:
stock: 725/1000
5850 #1: 815MHz core/1350MHz memory
5850 #2: 878MHz core/1400MHz memory

now that's a lot of head rooms. and at those clocks, it became faster than even 5870s.
http://www.firingsquad.com/har...nce_preview/page19.asp

 

[sandorski]

5850 certainly is very nice. I seriously think Nvidia is gonna have a tough time matching it on all points. AMD's expertise on Chip Design might really be coming to the front now and putting space between ATI and Nvidia. Will have to wait and see though.

 

[Ares202]

Im guessing the 5850 is about 0.5" longer than the 4870 that i currently have, if i decide to buy one its going to be a really tight squeeze to fit it in as my 4870 is already really close to my HDD bay

They should really have kept the 6 pin power inputs on the side like on the 5870 which gives around 1" more room, why didnt they do this? cut costs maybe?

 

[T2k]

Can someone tell me that why CF results disappear from all 1920x1200 results? They are there everywhere for 2560 but nowhere below....

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: nyker96
the 5850 is a overclocking monster, fireing squad was able to get:
stock: 725/1000
5850 #1: 815MHz core/1350MHz memory
5850 #2: 878MHz core/1400MHz memory

now that's a lot of head rooms. and at those clocks, it became faster than even 5870s.
http://www.firingsquad.com/har...nce_preview/page19.asp

wow, that is nice.

I can't wait to see if you can unlock it to 5870 specs. Then you could use a 5870 bios and you would have a shorter 5870!

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: sandorski
5850 certainly is very nice. I seriously think Nvidia is gonna have a tough time matching it on all points. AMD's expertise on Chip Design might really be coming to the front now and putting space between ATI and Nvidia. Will have to wait and see though.

5850 is a rehash of the previous gen, not a new arch. like GT300. It is too early to say anything about chip design.

And really the point nV cares about is performance. They held most of their marketshare even against the price of the 4890. All of the other aspects, like die size, etc, are things that only internet graphics nerds ever mention.

When Billy walks into Frys to get a new card, "die size" isnt on the box next to all the fancy numbers and letters.

Crap, there were people buying the 8800GTS 640 even though it was slower than the 512, just because 640 > 512. This shows just how "in-touch" they are.

In short, the general discreet GPU market does not care about most of the things we like to pretend are important on here. They just want to go home and run 3Dmark and have the biggest e-peen.

 

[BenSkywalker]

The 5850 is shaping up to be a very attractive offering, I think we may see a bit of vendor gouging until things settle down, its' performance/price is far better then the 5870 and I would imagine noone is going to keep these in stock for too long.

 

[imported_jasonnovak]

I'd like to see a comparison of the 5850 to a 4850 crossfire setup ... checked all the reviews and no one has seem to included that yet

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
The 5850 is shaping up to be a very attractive offering, I think we may see a bit of vendor gouging until things settle down, its' performance/price is far better then the 5870 and I would imagine noone is going to keep these in stock for too long.

Yea, there is a lot of space between the 5850MSRP and the 5870MSRP. Until there's a lot of intentory, I could see the 5850's selling for $300. Hopefully they'll get in quickly, either the reports of Dell getting 90% of the inventory are wrong, or there was a LOT of inventory and Dell bougth a LOT of parts. Here we are a week later and 5870's aren't hard to find.

 

[T2k]

Originally posted by: jasonnovak
I'd like to see a comparison of the 5850 to a 4850 crossfire setup ... checked all the reviews and no one has seem to included that yet

4850X2 easily beats even 5870, what else do you want to know?

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: T2k

Originally posted by: jasonnovak
I'd like to see a comparison of the 5850 to a 4850 crossfire setup ... checked all the reviews and no one has seem to included that yet

4850X2 easily beats even 5870, what else do you want to know?

Where do you get that information? The 4850x2 was just slightly faster than the GTX 285.

 

[TheSlamma]

Originally posted by: jasonnovak
I'd like to see a comparison of the 5850 to a 4850 crossfire setup ... checked all the reviews and no one has seem to included that yet

Pounds the dual 4870's

 

[KeithP]

If anyone sees a review of a 5850 on a more modest platform (dual core, 2.5 - 2.8GHz) please post a heads up. I hate that all these reviews seem to use a very high end platform to test a video card regardless of the market the card is targeted at.

-KeithP

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: KeithP
If anyone sees a review of a 5850 on a more modest platform (dual core, 2.5 - 2.8GHz) please post a heads up. I hate that all these reviews seem to use a very high end platform to test a video card regardless of the market the card is targeted at.

-KeithP

I've always kinda hated that too. Early reviews are usually High End machines. Eventually Toms or some Website will do some kind of Roundup or Let's See How the Peons Do It, kinda review.

 

[Tempered81]

Lets see how the peons do it!!!!

hahah, sounds like the alternative I heard for "CUDA Cores": "COWA Cores" (Can of Whoop-Ass Cores).

rofl.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: KeithP
If anyone sees a review of a 5850 on a more modest platform (dual core, 2.5 - 2.8GHz) please post a heads up. I hate that all these reviews seem to use a very high end platform to test a video card regardless of the market the card is targeted at.

-KeithP

I've always kinda hated that too. Early reviews are usually High End machines. Eventually Toms or some Website will do some kind of Roundup or Let's See How the Peons Do It, kinda review.

In many cases a 5850 and 5870 will be bottlenecked by a slower cpu, so it makes more sense to use a highly clocked processor to differentiate between the cards. If you're using a 2.5-2.8ghz dual core (say e6750 or e8200) and you don't OC then you're going to bewasting your money in a lot of cases getting a high end card.

@t2k, um, what did you mean to write there? 4850x2 is faster than gtx 285 in many cases, maybe even overall as a %, but it's not faster than 5850 and definitely not faster than 5870.