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5850 to 6950 worth it?

Devrij

Devrij

Devrij

Soldato
Joined
23 Jul 2009
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Bath
Was my birthday yesterday so I came into about £100 (50 in OcUK vouchers, thanks mum lol). My brother needs a decent gfx card so I'm tempted to sell him my xfx 5850 and upgrade to a 6950 and unlock it. Currently my 5850 is running at 950/1200 and is no slouch, but I have the itch and a £50 voucher burning a hole in my pocket.

Currently running [email protected] with 4GB RAM (also considered RAM upgrade, but not really needed), with a 120GB vertex 2e for my OS so can't really think of a better upgrade than gfx card.

So do I do it, or do I hang tight and store the voucher somewhere safe until new cards are released (by which I mean spend it now on something like a new mouse)?
 
Usually I would say no its not worth it.

Basically a 6950 is a glorified 5870, I know you can unlock it, so I guess thats something, but considering you can sell your 5850 to your brother and your already running top of the line cpu etc.. I think why not.

Is it worth waiting for new gpu? Possibly, but then everything is a wating game.
 
What resolution are you gaming at?

arc@css said:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=295

I've linked it to a 6970 as a comparison, since you mentioned flashing the card. I hope you had a nice birthday! :)

Btw...if your mobo supports crossfire, you could just drop in another 5850. Dirt cheap atm. ;)
Click to expand...

But then again, 5850s (at least the reference ones) overclock just as easily as the 6950s (rev1) unlock. To put it simple - I wouldn't expect a 5850 to be that far behind when overclocked (mine runs with 30% overclock with only 8% voltage increase on core which is around the reference 5870's).

I'm having the same problem now, trying to figure out whether it's worth ditching my money in another 5850, replacing the current one with a 6950 or GTX480, or simply waiting 6 months or so till the next generation hits the market (and that is almost certainly going to be a huge jump in performance).
 
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I should mention I can't run crossfire on my board, which I'm kicking myself about.

I play at 1920x1080, so most games play just fine (bar metro at full whack, and crysis could be a bit smoother). I'm thinking ahead to BF3 and now I have an excuse to splash out I'm tempted. Is it worth the £100 for a 25% increase in fps?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
 
I would say no. Personally i don't like to upgrade my GPU unless i will see more than a 50% increase in performance, usually i will wait for a 100% increase.

My last upgrade was a GTX 275 - GTX 480.
 
If you're happy with the performance then I'd leave it. You could always upgrade something else which is of higher priority.
 
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i upgraded from a 5850 to a 2gig 6950 then flashed it to a 6970 and the performance increase is amazing .. there's nothing this card can't do on maximum settings , much smoother and faster FPS ..
 
Not worth it IMO. 5850 is more than enough...save the money until BF3 comes out and see if there's anything worth buying then.
 
I have been playing with a 6950 today and the increase from a 5850 is very minimal. Benchmarks show a bit of an increase but ingame its no different.
 
I had a 5850 and went to a 6970. Not worth it.
It was nice but i shouldve spent my money on an ssd. Maybe get another ssd or ljquid cool
 
Cleeecooo said:
I had a 5850 and went to a 6970. Not worth it.
It was nice but i shouldve spent my money on an ssd.
Click to expand...
Hmm, basing your opinion on why not to upgrade, why did you not go back to a 5850 and buy the ssd instead of getting the 480 soc if it's wasn't worth it?
As a soc oc'ed is near 580, which in both cases are slightly faster than the oc'ed 6970.

To answer op's question, if your brother is willing to buy your 5850 and you have your £50 vouchers to upgrade to the 6950, if your talking an extra £50 to get your 6950 2GB rev 1 and flash it to 6950>70 you will be very glad you did.

MOOGLEYS said:
I have been playing with a 6950 today and the increase from a 5850 is very minimal. Benchmarks show a bit of an increase but ingame its no different.
Click to expand...

MOOGLEYS flash that 6950 of yours, oc it and you'll see the difference.

I went from oc'ed 5870 to 6950>70 and the difference was night and day.
gone was the low fps drops in all the games I play.

Everything is much, much smoother where as in certain games fps could be all over the place.

The 6950>70 oc's too, mine got 1GHz stable, boring video but you can skip to the end to see that it was 100% stable:

 
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It has the shaders unlocked but its not my card so cannot do anymore. In games ignoring benchmarks, fps counters etc I cannot tell the difference tbh.
 
So mixed opinions then. The main reason I'm thinking of doing it is because there isn't much else I need (a rare situation!) and I have the voucher to spend. Maybe I'll get a third monitor so I can justify the gfx card upgrade lol.
 
HDMI 1.4
4 monitors off single card
Unlockable
Overclockable
mini DP
3D
Power usage
Xfire scaleabilty
Drop in another in a few months
New Tech ( keeps price) 5850 already dropping in MM and shops

I would ditch now while you can still get 100 for your 5850
 
I have to disagree with Easyrider's opinion of "I would ditch now while you can still get 100 for your 5850 ", since 5850/5870 has ALREADY dropped by 50% in value...any further drop in value would be insignificant in comparison.

If you get a 6950 now, its value will drop like the 5850 when next gen 28nm GPU cards are out. I don't think you should upgrade from your current 5850 if it's not really struggling in the games you play.

An overclocked 6970 would probably give you around 15% extra speed (at best) over your 950 core clock 5850, but it would consume much more power, and run hotter...so it's hardly worth it, together with the extra cost of £100 in my opinion.
 
albert said:
i upgraded from a 5850 to a 2gig 6950 then flashed it to a 6970 and the performance increase is amazing .. there's nothing this card can't do on maximum settings , much smoother and faster FPS ..
Click to expand...

I'd agree with that more or less at 1080p although not Max'd AND full AA in most games. Mine still struggles with that.

(CPU bottleneck? Unsure, but I will be Overclocking to 3.6 or 3.8 very shortly anyway).
 
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