Sad to see it go.:(

[Machupo]

Sold the 5850 for $238. Ended up costing about $50 to upgrade to $470. I won't know till I use it if it's worth the extra $50.

Thanks again for the great deal -- I'm going the budget triple route 'cause I'm spending too much on wb's and rads, lol!

 

[MagickMan]

Good luck with it, hate to see you leave the Red team though.

Personally, I wouldn't have traded even if it were an even swap. I ain't budging from my 5850 CF setup, it's just crazy fast (and silent).

 

[Skurge]

It's definitely a side grade, but some of us like to try out what both camps have to offer instead of just relying on secondhand "facts" and benchmarks. This gen I've owned a 5870 and GTX 470, and I don't regret either purchase. Plus, if you sell one of them along the way you usually don't lose too much money in the process.

Radeon 5870... $380
GTX 470... $350
Actually knowing what I'm talking about... priceless

Which did you like more and why?

 

[nitromullet]

Which did you like more and why?

see sig... drivers and overall stability.

edit: I'm keeping my answer brief because I can only speak for myself. I'm sure others have a differing opinion, and honestly neither is bad by any means.

 

[BD231]

Crysis, physx ? Crysis does not use physx, all the physics are done on cpu. Not surprising that you couldn't tell the difference though. There isn't much of one.

At $280 the 470 is worth getting though, so nice deal, at it's current full retail, not a good buy as it performs the same as a 5850.

Which is precisely why that game runs like shit.

 

[toyota]

I really think Crysis with physx was awesome. If you never played it with physx you never played it. The 470 was high as I wanted to go as far as heat and power consumption. From the test I saw it was about the same as my gtx 280. I thought the 470 was on par with a 5870 with new drivers?

then I guess no one has ever played it since Crysis doesnt even use physx.

 

[Dark Shroud]

In a perfect world a Hydra board could run a 5850 as the first card and a 470 with a 2nd on board GPU for PhysX as the 2nd card.

The OP is lucky Crysis doesn't use PhysX let alone GPU accelerated PhysX as that would kill his FPS. If people want to use GPU accelerated PhysX in their rig it's non of my business. It's just scary how many people don't realized the impact of not having a dedicated PhysX card/GPU.

 

[Grooveriding]

Which is precisely why that game runs like shit.

Interesting theory, so you believe Crysis is so demanding on systems because of cpus having to take care of physics in the game. Fascinating.

 

[toyota]

Interesting theory, so you believe Crysis is so demanding on systems because of cpus having to take care of physics in the game. Fascinating.

yeah no kidding

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I didn't know about it not having physx. Whatever nvidia does with the 8X+Q and 16X+Q looks great. That's why I thought it had physx.

I've only had time to install the card and install drivers basically. I noticed the idle temps are about 54c on the 470. My 5850 idled at mid 30's. Also I ran windows 7 experience test and both the 5850 and 470 score 7.7. The 470 max temp during just the windows gpu test got up to 82c max. I figure it should be high 80's low 90's during gaming. I used both of these cards on a 42" LCD. The 470 was just plug and play and the screen was @1080p and filled the screen perfectly. I had to tweak some of the settings to get the 5850 to fill the screen properly. No big deal but could be a hassle to some less knowledgable users. That's all I can gather so far.

 

[Axon]

What do you think of the "noise" level of the fan? I found it to be no different than any other high end card I've ever owned, you know?

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

What do you think of the "noise" level of the fan? I found it to be no different than any other high end card I've ever owned, you know?

Idle it sounds no louder than my 5850. It really hasn't been under any load yet but when running the windows gpu test I never noticed it.

 

[Qbah]

Definitely looking forward to some additional remarks from the OP

Though, the noise - how would you compare it to your old HD5850? Is it the same? Louder? Quieter? Also, did your old HD5850 have the stock cooler?

EDIT: Got my noise question answered Now waiting for some game tests!

 

[Lonyo]

Which is precisely why that game runs like shit.

Totally CPU limited.

Oh, wait...

 

[Skurge]

Which is precisely why that game runs like shit.

GPU physx is the last thing you'd want in crysis

 

[MrK6]

Totally CPU limited.
Oh, wait...

I lol'd :awe:

If you want PhysX and don't mind the extra noise/power draw, then yes. Especially if it was a good deal price-wise.

That pretty much says it all right there. There's definite trade-offs, and it's all about whether or not you're willing to make them. I think the low price of entry makes this a good opportunity to tinker with something new. Personally, I'd be curious to see just how far one could push the GTX 470. IIRC, I think at around 800MHz it starts beating out the GTX480 (and I wonder if that's at less power draw too).

 

[Grooveriding]

I lol'd :awe:

That pretty much says it all right there. There's definite trade-offs, and it's all about whether or not you're willing to make them. I think the low price of entry makes this a good opportunity to tinker with something new. Personally, I'd be curious to see just how far one could push the GTX 470. IIRC, I think at around 800MHz it starts beating out the GTX480 (and I wonder if that's at less power draw too).

I'll dig around for a review of 470/480 overclocking power draw I saw somewhere. As I recall they use a lot more power when overclocked, I believe the overclocked 470 was using as much or more power than a stock 480.

 

[BD231]

Interesting theory, so you believe Crysis is so demanding on systems because of cpus having to take care of physics in the game. Fascinating.

Alright, well let us all in on why the game scales terribly on multi-gpu setups and get back to me.

 

[Lonyo]

Alright, well let us all in on why the game scales terribly on multi-gpu setups and get back to me.

Um, show us where the game scales terribly on multi-GPU setups and we'll get back to you on why it does.
Unless 80% scaling at 1920x1200 is terrible, 94% at 2560x1600 (both on GTX480 - the fastest single card you can buy therefore the most likely to be CPU limited).

 

[Skurge]

Alright, well let us all in on why the game scales terribly on multi-gpu setups and get back to me.

Are you implying crysis is CPU limited and should use GPU physx instead?
I wonder where you get that from :hmm:

 

[SlowSpyder]

Which is precisely why that game runs like shit.

I think pretty much all hardware Physx games take a frame rate hit when you enable hardware Physx compared to CPU handling the physics effects.

Crysis is much harder on the graphics card than the CPU...

 

[BD231]

Are you implying crysis is CPU limited and should use GPU physx instead?
I wonder where you get that from :hmm:

No. I'm saying I'd rather play a game without any form of edited for zerocool " physics " than deal with massive maps that over use the feature like Crysis. I never said the game was CPU limited, I was simply stating their use of it is poor imo and a big reason why the game doesn't run better than it dose on a lot of hardware.

Forget trees, forget water, whatever your vehicles are whack anyway, why why why.

 

[MrK6]

No. I'm saying I'd rather play a game without any form of physx than deal with massive maps that over use the feature like Crysis. I never said the game was CPU limited, I was simply stating their use of it is poor imo and a big reason why the game doesn't run better than it dose on a lot of hardware.

Forget trees, forget water, whatever your vehicles are whack anyway, why why why.

Except that Crysis doesn't use PhysX in any form.

 

[BD231]

Except that Crysis doesn't use PhysX in any form.

Its own implimentation, thanks.

http://kotaku.com/329256/crysis-physics-porn

 

[SHAQ]

Crysis is CPU limited in some areas of the game. Load up the 3rd level I believe overlooking the encampment or overlooking the village in the 2nd level. You will see your GPU utilization go from 99% to 50%(if you have high-end SLI/XFire). Draw distance is a CPU limited phenomenon. It is why in Morrowind you can not increase draw distance on a current i7 even with video cards that are 5 times(at least) more powerful than they were back then. Crysis will not run much better than it does now even 5 years into the future. The coding was not very impressive and doesn't utilize quads like was promised before it was released. So I for one would have preferred GPU physics in that game. At least GPU speed increases year after year. CPU limited games won't play better with upgrades unless clock speed can increase into the 6-8Ghz range or they patch the game to utilize threading more efficiently.