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Sapphire 5850

Merlin5

Merlin5

Merlin5

Soldato
Joined
17 Aug 2009
Posts
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Location
Finchley, London
Sapphire 5850 *or HIS 6950

I'm really tempted to buy it today. OCuK are selling it for £115. Is that a steal and will I get the performance boost of near 50% more than my 4870 as benchmarks seem to score? Will my cpu (in sig) bottleneck it by much?
 
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I don't think a 550BE at 3.1GHz will bottleneck a single 5850, two 5850's maybe! Also depends on what sort a games you play. I have a mate with a 555BE that seems to handle CPU intensive games fine! Should be a nice upgrade on a 4870!
Jonnygrunge.
 
It is only a good deal if you can get the card to work, but you should be aware that some of us can't, despite the rest of our hardware being tested as fine. Check out this thread;-

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18260756

Before you make your decision. I have also had replies to my thread over at Tom's Hardware which suggest that these cards can be a tad temperamental and take a dislike to your system and your PSU in particular. Even if you have a Zalman 1000W HP like me.
 
It depends on the game scene really...

For example, if you are playing single player FPS small closed rooms and not with lots of enemies, then there won't be much bottleneck; however if you play online, with like 15-20 players shooting the hell out of each other at the same place, or in a game section with lots of NPC enemies units, or in open world, then the dual-core at just 3.1GHz WILL bottleneck the 5850 in those situations.

If you can't unlock the extra cores for your CPU, you should at least try overclocking it (if you got a decent CPU cooler that is).
 
Thanks for the replies guys. Hmm, I read through all of that thread you linked Ginnyfizz.
I don't know what to do now. The performance to price ratio is extremely good, I mean this guy's benchmark test is excellent,

" Far Cry 2

Settings: Demo(Ranch Small), 1920x1080 (60Hz), D3D9, Fixed Time Step(No), Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High)

ATI 4870 512mb

Average Framerate: 11.91
Max. Framerate: 26.90
Min. Framerate: 4.11

ATI 5850 Extreme 1gb

Average Framerate: 44.75
Max. Framerate: 73.90
Min. Framerate: 29.18 "

Do I take a chance and hope it works? Is this the reason the card is so cheap because it's flakey? Or do I go for something slightly more expensive known for reliability?

Just seen its jumped up by £5 more since last night.
 
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Merlin5 said:
Would you say 'no question about, the 6950 is leaps and bounds ahead of the 5850, worth the extra money, and you should definitely get it', or is it marginal difference?
Click to expand...
Is the 6950 faster than the 5850? Yes...since the 6950 is around same speed/slightly faster than the 5870.

Is the 6950 gonna be faster than the 5850 in your system with just a dual-core CPU at 3.1GHz? Most likely not.

You really need to get the CPU sorted first...what motherboard are you using? Are you sure you can't unlock extra cores on it? Also, you should look into overclocking the CPU...it is a crime to run the CPU at stock speed with the TRUE Rev.C cooler lol
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Is the 6950 faster than the 5850? Yes...since the 6950 is around same speed/slightly faster than the 5870.

Is the 6950 gonna be faster than the 5850 in your system with just a dual-core CPU at 3.1GHz? Most likely not.

You really need to get the CPU sorted first...what motherboard are you using? Are you sure you can't unlock extra cores on it? Also, you should look into overclocking the CPU...
Click to expand...

I overclocked my CPU last year and I think I got to about 3.4 or 3.5 ghz stable. Then I put it back to stock. What's minimum O/C to really benefit from 6950 over the 5850? Obviously not worth me spending £60 more if my cpu holds it back, and no, I never was able to get my cores unlocked, not even tri-core. Even though my gigabyte motherboard has the prerequisite SB710 for unlocking and the correct bios for unlocking.
 
Merlin5 said:
I overclocked my CPU last year and I think I got to about 3.4 or 3.5 ghz stable. Then I put it back to stock. What's minimum O/C to really benefit from 6950 over the 5850? Obviously not worth me spending £60 more if my cpu holds it back, and no, I never was able to get my cores unlocked, not even tri-core. Even though my gigabyte motherboard has the prerequisite SB710 for unlocking and the correct bios for unlocking.
Click to expand...
That's too bad really...sounds like you are unlucky and the two locked away cores on your 550BE are duff cores :(

Anyway, since you are only on two cores, you should try to overclock your CPU to as high as possible...3.7-3.8GHz should be doable.

I still think you'd be better off going for the 5850. The 6950 2GB is not hugely faster than the 5850, unless you unlocked from 6950 to 6970- and again, your CPU will be the limiting factor, so you won't see the full benefit it has to offer...a fast graphic card doesn't help increasing frame rate if the CPU is holding back the GPU usage of the graphic card (not using the GPU to its max capability to be exact/or GPU usage not hitting close to max).
 
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Very true what you're saying. Ok, then what about future proofing with the 6950 in case I change to a quad core at some point?
 
Merlin5 said:
Very true what you're saying. Ok, then what about future proofing with the 6950 in case I change to a quad core at some point?
Click to expand...
One thing you have to bare in mind is that the next gen cards that are on 28nm process will be hitting the shelf around near the end of the year, which would most likely be faster, lower power consumption and cooler running.

The current gen's card is not much faster than the previous gen or as fast as it could have been, because the 32nm process got skipped, and both Nvidia and AMD had to compromise and make cards base on the now relately old 40nm process. In the process of trying to squeeze more performance out of them, the power consumption got raised by a fair amount, which add to the heat as well.

I can't decide for you rather or not you should get the 5850 or 6950 2GB for future proof sake, but one thing that's clear is the if you spend more money and get the 6950 2GB instead of the 5850, the later you would be upgrading 28nm process card in the future (unless you are not the kind of people that spend money wisely).

Pretty sure the 6950 2GB won't hold its value and the new and 2nd hand value will drop like flies when the next gen cards are out (new 6950 2GB most likely drop to EOL price of around £150, and 2nd hand would probably be worth like around £120, so that's losing like £70-£80), but if you get a 5850 at £115 now, you would most likely still get £80 back for selling it...so you are paying only £35 for using it for the next 6-8 months, and then you can grab yourself the brand new 28nm cards ;)

But bottomline is, it depends when you are going to upgrade you CPU or platform...if you are not upgrading anytime soon, then the 5850 would be the realistic option.
 
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Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme ordered just now. :) Hope it works! Damn bank holiday weekend, no delvery till tuesday 3rd May. With my £60 refund yesterday, I feel like I've only spent £55. :p
 
Was supposed to come today but it's now being delivered tomorrow, just had DX tracking confirmation. Thank god, this GT 430 has been a good temporary backup, but I'm fed up with the horrible framerate.


Willl OCuK have sent the Sapphire 5850 in it's complete box packaging? I hope so. Past cards I've had from them come only with the anti static bag.
edit: it's arrived, complete with box. Yay. Now to install her. :)
 
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Yay, just installed and all working great so far. :) I was a bit worried since others had problems. I get a cool fan speed meter this time, which wasn't monitored on the 4870.


hd5850overdrivetab.jpg
 
The next thing to do would be to see how far you can push the overclock.

May be overclock from 725MHz to 800MHz right off the bet and then run some benchmarks and games to see if the card can run stable with the overclock on stock voltage? :p

If you lucky, you shouldn't get any driver crash, artefacts or tearing...but if you do, you might need to back down on the core-clock a bit.
 
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