• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Flagship Gfx cards...

james.miller said:
yeah, and that's why i said almost.
Click to expand...

They're obviously not 2x as fast across the board, next gen hardware single GPUs are very rarely 2x as fast across the board because there are always anomalies that crop up or difficulties in extracting the complete raw performance numbers out of a card and applying it to all games.

I would agree with you that an HD5850 has the potential to be averagely 2x faster than a 5770 because of how well they overclock, but a 5850 stock isn't, so overclocking is a must.
 
kylew said:
They're obviously not 2x as fast across the board, next gen hardware single GPUs are very rarely 2x as fast across the board because there are always anomalies that crop up or difficulties in extracting the complete raw performance numbers out of a card and applying it to all games.

I would agree with you that an HD5850 has the potential to be averagely 2x faster than a 5770 because of how well they overclock, but a 5850 stock isn't, so overclocking is a must.
Click to expand...

don't forget the 5770's overclock well to ? :)
 
i don't think they are getting any more expensive i remember the GF2 Ultra costing around £450

i think its just the other components are getting cheaper

but i do believe motherboards are starting to get ridiculously expensive

all started with the 680i now for a top of the line mobo your looking at 220-280 :(
 
Top end kit will always be expensive, but i think motherboard proces are actually coming down in recent times. yeah i know you can spend £300 on a quadfire / quad sli board, but that's a very niche market.

Look at want £120 actually gets you these days - usb3,sata6, sli or crossfire, onboard gpu's with every output under the sun available ect.

if i compare my asus m4a89gtd pro usb3 @ £115 to what i paid for my abit ip35pro a few years ago...(£150)..you get far more thrown in these days.
 
Sem said:
all started with the 680i now for a top of the line mobo your looking at 220-280 :(
Click to expand...

Most top end mobos just add fluff that doesn't really make it worth it though. I mean look at the Gigabyte X58A motherboards, why would anyone buy the UD7 over the UD3R honestly? You gain more power phases which don't actually gain you much if anything in overclocking, you gain oversized chipset heatsinks and an extra LAN port, hardly worth £100 more.
 
Think Nvidia is overpriced, you always pay a premium for new cards anyway even if the older generation can get better performane in Xfire or SLI for less, new tech costs more
 
Top end graphics cards have nearly always cost a small fortune. I remember the geforce 4 ti 4600 costing me £323 from ocuk at launch (leadtek one, was a beast) and a similar story with the 9700 pro. Adding to that, the most expensive card I've bought is still the x1800 which cost me over £400 at launch from ocuk and was bought for the launch of HL2 which it completely creamed with 4xAA and 16xAF :D

The current crop of cards also have inflation to contend with driving the prices up even higher -.- (didnt stop me paying £300 for a 5870 though)
 
mame said:
I'm surprised how many people are buying the 58**. I think they are way overpriced for the performance that they offer over the last generation.
Click to expand...

You realise a 5870 gives literally twice the performance of a 4890 in Metro 2033, and is likely to continue to do so in the harder games. Its a very powerful card and not bad value.

Last generation a 4850 could not get close toa 4870 in performance because it was so heavily limited, this generation a 5850 performs inperceptibly close to the 5870 when overclocked and overclocks to very similar levels quite easily. So last gen £200 got you the top end performance you could get on launch, this generation £200 gets you within a hairs breath of top end performance on launch.

The ONLY difference is last year AMD made a killing at £200, and this year the 5850 offers massively less profit at £200. The 5770 beats out the 4890 in Metro 2033, and will again likely continue to do so in dx11 games and games that push the shaders harder.

Considering for the past decade ATi's "5870" equivilent card has been between £300-400, and only once really came in significantly below that on the 4870, its not exactly surprising and the current situation of a 5850 at £200, hasn't happened before.

Nvidia have a seemingly awful pricing structure, but thats dictated by core size, the embarassing thing is at £450, they will still make a quite large loss on each sale.

Keep in mind that last gen a 4870 got more cores per wafer, was probably closer to twice the yield and a wafer only cost around $3800, this gen the 5870 has less cores per wafer, a significantly worse yield, and a wafer costs $500.

At launch you'd guess yields to be around 40%, which means about 55 cores per wafer, so they cost $90 a core without profit or any other bits(5000/75). Last gen you were looking at maybe 120 cores out of a much cheaper wafer or $31, $20-30 for mem, $20 pcb, $10 power circuitry, $10 connectors and other surface mounted bits, $10 for heatsink and you can quickly see why a 4850 made loads of sales but little profit.

This gen there really isn't a lot of profit on a 5850, costs have gone up significantly, more due to yields than the price of wafers, unfortunately AMD and even Nvidia have little choice but to pay TSMC for the wafers, theres no one else available.

Most generations have offered about +80% the performance of the real last gen, but the refresh screws what people think is the last gen. The 4870 is the last gen card, the 5870 is this gen, the 4890 is what a mature process and a few tweaks could extract out of that same generation after a long time. Very very rarely has performance literally doubled since a LONG time back when GPU's weren't really limited by anything, when you went from 1 to 2>4>8>16 pipelines memory, memory speed, bus, features were all increasing very fast at the same time, aswell as clockspeeds. Somewhere along the line bus's, clockspeeds and features hit somewhat of a wall and just doubling a couple bits each gen won't easily offer a flatline of double the performance. 70-80% is a VERY good increase and the 5xxx series offers that and more recently sometimes quite a bit more.
 
Last edited:
5770 crossfire is better than a 5870 at the same price as a 5850 :)

It is the current most cost effective setup. As nice as 5800s are, I also cant justify paying the current prices for them when compared to the 5770.

Motherboards are still expensive though.

I summarised my upgrade costs for my PC here.

For the graphics cards, I used to pay loads for high end back when I were a student. I started out buying a 9800 Pro, then Nvidia 6800 SLI, X1800 (big mistake, quickly updated), X1900 xt, then a 3870 (last single card setup).

Most of those things were very expensive and lost lots of money when selling second hand (except the 3870), then I moved onto crossfire after I found some special edition 3850s at £72 and bought two. Then I got a pair of similar special 4850s for £120 each (zerotherm cooled ones), followed by 4870s after they were reduced to £150, which turned out to be my next mistake and I hated them (too hot at stock frequencies, wouldnt even OC by 10 Mhz, 100+ degrees on first card which died from Street Fighter 4 :x), but I managed to sell my 4850s at a good price because the zerotherm cooled ones were discontinued (that cooler was brilliant, but they dont make it anymore).

Now I got the 5770s, and my next upgrade will again be whatever costs <£150 per card and doesnt operate at BBQ grill temperatures (likely HD 6770). 5850 and upwards cost too much. Think I'll be sticking to the *770 crossfire from here onwards :)
 
Last edited:
drunkenmaster said:
You realise a 5870 gives literally twice the performance of a 4890 in Metro 2033, and is likely to continue to do so in the harder games. Its a very powerful card and not bad value.

Last generation a 4850 could not get close toa 4870 in performance because it was so heavily limited, this generation a 5850 performs inperceptibly close to the 5870 when overclocked and overclocks to very similar levels quite easily. So last gen £200 got you the top end performance you could get on launch, this generation £200 gets you within a hairs breath of top end performance on launch.

The ONLY difference is last year AMD made a killing at £200, and this year the 5850 offers massively less profit at £200. The 5770 beats out the 4890 in Metro 2033, and will again likely continue to do so in dx11 games and games that push the shaders harder.

Considering for the past decade ATi's "5870" equivilent card has been between £300-400, and only once really came in significantly below that on the 4870, its not exactly surprising and the current situation of a 5850 at £200, hasn't happened before.

Nvidia have a seemingly awful pricing structure, but thats dictated by core size, the embarassing thing is at £450, they will still make a quite large loss on each sale.

Keep in mind that last gen a 4870 got more cores per wafer, was probably closer to twice the yield and a wafer only cost around $3800, this gen the 5870 has less cores per wafer, a significantly worse yield, and a wafer costs $500.

At launch you'd guess yields to be around 40%, which means about 55 cores per wafer, so they cost $90 a core without profit or any other bits(5000/75). Last gen you were looking at maybe 120 cores out of a much cheaper wafer or $31, $20-30 for mem, $20 pcb, $10 power circuitry, $10 connectors and other surface mounted bits, $10 for heatsink and you can quickly see why a 4850 made loads of sales but little profit.

This gen there really isn't a lot of profit on a 5850, costs have gone up significantly, more due to yields than the price of wafers, unfortunately AMD and even Nvidia have little choice but to pay TSMC for the wafers, theres no one else available.

Most generations have offered about +80% the performance of the real last gen, but the refresh screws what people think is the last gen. The 4870 is the last gen card, the 5870 is this gen, the 4890 is what a mature process and a few tweaks could extract out of that same generation after a long time. Very very rarely has performance literally doubled since a LONG time back when GPU's weren't really limited by anything, when you went from 1 to 2>4>8>16 pipelines memory, memory speed, bus, features were all increasing very fast at the same time, aswell as clockspeeds. Somewhere along the line bus's, clockspeeds and features hit somewhat of a wall and just doubling a couple bits each gen won't easily offer a flatline of double the performance. 70-80% is a VERY good increase and the 5xxx series offers that and more recently sometimes quite a bit more.
Click to expand...

If the 5870 is 70-80% faster than the 4870, and the GF4800 is 20% faster than the 5870, then the GF480 has doubled the performance of the last gen ATI card.....
 
drunkenmaster said:
Most generations have offered about +80% the performance of the real last gen, but the refresh screws what people think is the last gen. The 4870 is the last gen card, the 5870 is this gen, the 4890 is what a mature process and a few tweaks could extract out of that same generation after a long time. Very very rarely has performance literally doubled since a LONG time back when GPU's weren't really limited by anything, when you went from 1 to 2>4>8>16 pipelines memory, memory speed, bus, features were all increasing very fast at the same time, aswell as clockspeeds. Somewhere along the line bus's, clockspeeds and features hit somewhat of a wall and just doubling a couple bits each gen won't easily offer a flatline of double the performance. 70-80% is a VERY good increase and the 5xxx series offers that and more recently sometimes quite a bit more.
Click to expand...

True.

Also despite how impressive the 8800gtx was, it didn't really give double performance over previous gen either, maybe the 7900gtx, but not the x1950xtx. In fact, it's only in more recent, shader heavy games where the 8800gtx came close to double performance, but isn't that the situation we have now?

It's almost certain that at some point in the future, cards like the 5870 will offer double the performance of a 4890 in certain games and similarly the gtx480 will offer double the performance of a gtx285; it just a matter of time. The problem is, things are moving so fast now, by the time that happens we will have the next gen of cards already out and everyone will forget about the 5870/480.
 
D.P. said:
If the 5870 is 70-80% faster than the 4870, and the GF4800 is 20% faster than the 5870, then the GF480 has doubled the performance of the last gen ATI card.....
Click to expand...

Yea it has, if you look at reviews that are up comparing the 4870 X2, 5870 and the GTX 480, the GTX 480 is faster than the 4870 X2 in some games, and just a little slower in others, while the 5870 is a fair bit more behind.

But, the 5770 Crossfire when overclocked is even more better than the 4870 X2 setup, so for £240 for two of them you can get very close to GTX 480 performance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom