anyone disapointed with 5000s series

burtie · 13 May 2010 at 14:07

Went form a 4890 to 5870 and I'm yet to notice anything any different other than a smaller bank balance, gray screens, lock ups etc. going from DX10 to DX11 was an anti climax to be honest.

I never upgrading again until this PC falls apart.

wolvers · 13 May 2010 at 14:39

lanzarobbie said:
yeah but isnt the price aswell, i payed about £130 for my 4850 2 yrs ago the 5850 is around £230 £100 more.

mame said:
I've tried talking myself into buying a 5850 or 5870 but I just can't, they are too expensive. For the cost over the card I have now, I don't think a 5850 is that impressive really. It's no more an important card than the 8800GT was when that was released for about £130. People seem quick to forget how cheap last gen cards were last year, even the 4890 was £125 a few weeks after release.

You can't compare with the 4xxx series prices because of the way the value of the pound has changed.

5850 from a 4850 is definitely worth an upgrade, as is 260 to 5850 which I did myself. Overclocked they are faster than 4870 xfire.

Cooper · 13 May 2010 at 14:51

My 1Gb 4850 cost me £73.99 (brand new) form OC....in July 2009.

The 5850 which is roughly x2 as powerful costs more than x3 as much.......

Anyone who thinks a 5850 is worth more than £150 at this stage in its lifecycle is a moron with more money than brains.

harryohh · 13 May 2010 at 14:56

drunkenmaster said:
OK, lets be honest and not rewrite the history books.

A 4850, overclocked NEVER CAME CLOSE to a 4870 in performance, it didn't overclock very well and had a massively stunted bandwidth due to memory. A 4870, the top end card that wasn't even closely matched by its lower end 4850 brother, was £180 or so on launch.

This gen a 5850 which most certainly does match its big brother(5% difference both maxed out), which only has low stock clocks but isn't massively crippled like the 4850, was £200 on launch, I actually got mine for £193, about a week after launch.

The price is still £200 rrp, you can still find them for VERY close to this, you've been able to find them VERY close to this since launch. RETAILERS are marking them up, RETAILERS are making a killing on them because the consumer is willing(stupidly) to pay it.

SO last gen to get the best AMD card around cost £180, this time £200. What a massive difference.

The reason for the price difference is fairly simple, first GDDR5 costs several times what gddr3 does, that was half the reason for the low cost of the 4850. Also was a very mature 55nm process that had a cheap cost per wafer and massive yields for AMD.

40nm is a horrible process, wafers cost the best part of 50% more and on top of that yields are way down. Core costs are OVER 100% higher than last gen.

The fact that to get a similar level of performance, in terms of getting a top end card, has gone from £180-200, is brilliant. Because of the core cost increase to AMD, we could have seen the £300 5870 as 20-25% faster than a 5850, but a 5850 crippled so it could never get close, then you'd have a point.

As for looking at one game to determine performance, thats ridiculous, you could have gone with Metro 2033, probably the best looking game around right now, the 5870 is twice as fast as the 4890 in that, its showed the absolute best scaling in performance so far of any game.

Meaning, double the performance is certainly there. Not all games show it, hardly surprising and nothing new.

I don't know where you're getting that from.The 5850 isn't this gens "best" card.Irrespective of how much the 5870 is this gens best card (ignoring dual gpus).

Greebo · 13 May 2010 at 15:01

Cooper said:
My 1Gb 4850 cost me £73.99 (brand new) form OC....in July 2009.

The 5850 which is roughly x2 as powerful costs more than x3 as much.......

Anyone who thinks a 5850 is worth more than £150 at this stage in its lifecycle is a moron with more money than brains.

Hardly a fair comparison. You are looking at a card sometime through it's lide cycle and as such the price has dropped.

You'll see 5850's for £100 in a years time.

Cooper · 13 May 2010 at 15:25

Greebo said:
Hardly a fair comparison. You are looking at a card sometime through it's lide cycle and as such the price has dropped.

You'll see 5850's for £100 in a years time.

Still doesn't change the fact that the 5xxx series cards, cost to power ratio, is still way too high..for a card nearly a year into its life cycle.

Yakyb · 13 May 2010 at 15:41

have to be honest i'm made up with my 5770 as part of my media centre could not do a better job

Yakyb · 13 May 2010 at 15:43

Cooper said:
Still doesn't change the fact that the 5xxx series cards, cost to power ratio, is still way too high..for a card nearly a year into its life cycle.

back then however they had serious competition with Nvidia and to be honest there is non in these price brackets at the moment

RynceWynd · 13 May 2010 at 15:43

the price seems middle of the road for me, it's not cheap but it's not a rip off compared to all previous gens except the 4 series.

The 4series for me was the stand out series in the last decade, price to performance perfected, and it's unlikely to be topped with the economies the way they are.

But in the context of the OP, I went from a poor clocking 4890 (cost me 169), to a poor clocking 5850 (234) and for 65 quid the performance increase is enough to keep me happy,if it wasn't for eye infinity i would have been disappointed, I think I would have kept my 4890.

reflux · 13 May 2010 at 15:48

Lets not forget what happened last time there was no competition; when the Nvidia 8800 series was ruling the roost and ATi had nothing. The 8800GTX was £350+ and the 'value offering' high end card, the 8800GTS 320mb, was around £220. Nvidia's replacement for the 7900 series, the 8600 series, were bare minimum offerings that were barely faster (and in some cases slower) than the old high-end kit.

We can see the same pattern with ATi's 5xxx series today.

Sayso · 13 May 2010 at 16:01

I always spend around £200 on a GFX card, and as far as i can remember my 4879 512 and my 4890 1Gb cost about that when i got them, usually sell them for above £100 and pay out a 100 to get a new one.
The 5850 is a step up from the 4890 i had clocked to the max under water, its a good card and the price would have dropped to the more acceptable £150 range already if NV had released a card to compete at the price.

petriodet · 13 May 2010 at 16:10

thing that op is missing is that it's not always about the maximum fps, minimum fps is almost as important as the max.
and no i'm not disappointed after all you did get dx11 and i saw a noticeable rise in fps from 4870 crossfire.(i now have a 5870)

Greebo · 13 May 2010 at 16:12

Cooper said:
Still doesn't change the fact that the 5xxx series cards, cost to power ratio, is still way too high..for a card nearly a year into its life cycle.

it's not a year, it's 7 months. Probably only 5 months since they appeared in any reasonable volume. :rolleyes:

lanzarobbie · 13 May 2010 at 16:13

reflux said:
Lets not forget what happened last time there was no competition; when the Nvidia 8800 series was ruling the roost and ATi had nothing. The 8800GTX was £350+ and the 'value offering' high end card, the 8800GTS 320mb, was around £220. Nvidia's replacement for the 7900 series, the 8600 series, were bare minimum offerings that were barely faster (and in some cases slower) than the old high-end kit.

We can see the same pattern with ATi's 5xxx series today.

Shows how important competiton is

Jay_t · 13 May 2010 at 16:17

The only thing I'm disappointed with is the £500 I had to pay to crossfire 5850s 6 monthes after launch.

lanzarobbie · 13 May 2010 at 16:19

Jay_t said:
The only thing I'm disappointed with is the £500 I had to pay to crossfire 5850s 6 monthes after launch.

ouch thats a lot of dosh the most i payed for a card was £220 7800gt with cod 2

Panos · 13 May 2010 at 16:25

If you believe that a 5870 or a 5850 are too expensive, on a PCIe 2.0 motherboard plug 2 5770s (they cost both almost as much one 5850).

With the overdrive to 950mhz, they are way faster than any of the single cards mentioned

MoRT489 · 13 May 2010 at 16:28

love my 5870, it sees any game and goes om nom nom

RavenXXX2 · 13 May 2010 at 16:29

Yeah then you may have xfire problems such as games not scaling to well and then being down to a single 5770 in performance in the worst case scenario, the 5850/70 overclock as well..

Ryan-3 · 13 May 2010 at 16:32

yes. My 5770 is pretty bad, and the drivers ain't too great, but seems to have improved. Still saving, and waiting too see if nVidia's GTX485 will come, just like the 280>285