Value for Money Upgrade from HD5850?

Chazaxl · 28 Nov 2011 at 16:42

As the title says - the card has served me well but noticed bad frames in Rift recently. Admittedly this is an MMO however others with newer hardware were not experience frame drop in the huge encounters as I was.

On that basis, best value for money upgrade on this?

Thanks

Faztastic · 28 Nov 2011 at 17:31

adding another 5850 for around 90 quid gives you nvidia 580 performance.

tbh · 28 Nov 2011 at 17:46

I also have a 5850 and I'm waiting for the 7xxx series, I'd suggest you do the same.

Marine-RX179 · 28 Nov 2011 at 17:46

Chazaxl said:
As the title says - the card has served me well but noticed bad frames in Rift recently. Admittedly this is an MMO however others with newer hardware were not experience frame drop in the huge encounters as I was.

Use MSI Afterburner to check your GPU usage when for scenes you get poor frame rate...I recall reading that the game only uses two cores, so you might have a case of CPU bottleneck. My 5850 would get bottleneck by my Q6600 at 3.6GHz from time to time on MMOs, due to mmo games developers for some reason keep on refusing to design/optimise their games to use all 4 cores, despite how CPU intensive mmos are...

Mattuk69 · 28 Nov 2011 at 17:50

Chazaxl said:
As the title says - the card has served me well but noticed bad frames in Rift recently. Admittedly this is an MMO however others with newer hardware were not experience frame drop in the huge encounters as I was.

On that basis, best value for money upgrade on this?

Thanks

Rift runs like crap imo. And the game does not even use AA? :rolleyes:

Chazaxl · 29 Nov 2011 at 11:38

Mattuk69 said:
Rift runs like crap imo. And the game does not even use AA?

This is a concern but others with better cards are reporting no frame issues.

In terms of another card - that is an idea but I believe on my X48 Asus Rampage Formula mobo, SLI is not an option - anyone able to confirm this?

Thanks

Sasahara · 29 Nov 2011 at 11:49

Chazaxl said:
This is a concern but others with better cards are reporting no frame issues.

In terms of another card - that is an idea but I believe on my X48 Asus Rampage Formula mobo, SLI is not an option - anyone able to confirm this?

Thanks

SLI isn't an option on that mobo, lucky you want to do crossfire with the 5850 and that is supported.

You would want at a decent 750 W PSU to run crossfire 5850. (Good 650 W would probably work)

But I'd wait consider the wait the the 7xxx too.

Louis_Y · 29 Nov 2011 at 11:52

What's the rest of your rig? You may be bottlenecking at the CPU rather than the gfx card. I was (E8500 [email protected] + 5850) - going to an i5 2500k made a world of difference to fps.

Chazaxl · 29 Nov 2011 at 13:58

Sorry, SLI, Crossfire, same thing ;p

Im running on a Q9450 which normally runs at 2.6GHz although im running around 3.06 GHz at the moment overclocked. This is on the X48 Asus Formula mobo, SSD Intel drive for OS and games with 4 Gig of decent RAM.

My PSU is a Corsair 620W unit - will this be enough? I can always put the 5850 in my other PCs once they are no longer of value ... perhaps not in Crossfire but even as a single device.

Chazaxl · 29 Nov 2011 at 14:24

Faztastic said:
adding another 5850 for around 90 quid gives you nvidia 580 performance.

Who still sells these - nothing shown on this fine vendor's site.

Thanks

Louis_Y · 29 Nov 2011 at 17:22

Probably referring to the Members Market (2nd hand OcUK forum). You need a minimum post count which I still haven't reached :mad:

nitram100 · 29 Nov 2011 at 19:18

Same boat. Looking to upgrade from 5850 but in two minds whether to go xfire for only 80-90 quid or just wait for the 7000 series.

DarkHorizon472 · 29 Nov 2011 at 22:32

I have a 5770 and am staying playing bf3 on medium until 7000 series comes out. Should not be too long now for reviews and performance charts.

Chazaxl · 1 Dec 2011 at 15:46

Considering the 7XXX series seems close, no need to rush - not a biggie - will make a call then on this.Thanks to all for info etc.

Louis_Y · 1 Dec 2011 at 18:29

Good call. I think a lot of people (myself included) are waiting for the 7 series before upgrading.

KraniX · 1 Dec 2011 at 22:27

I picked up a 5850 when Sapphire relaunched a bunch back in the summer, is a good card, nice and quiet and good performer overall. I recently upgraded my C2D to an i5 2500k which gave a decent boost but was thinking of replacing my card with something a bit beefier but can't find anything worthwhile. The new 446 Ti wouldn't be bad if it was a more reasonable price but 220+ is too much for not enough of an increase in my book so guess I'll be waiting too.

steve1873 · 1 Dec 2011 at 22:27

Definitely if you could pick up a 2nd 5850 for say £90-£100 I would do that. And then wait a few months and perhaps sell both for maybe a total of £120'ish and use that money towards an upgrade to a 7 series card.

Skynet-T800 · 1 Dec 2011 at 23:07

I'm using 2 5850's and BF3 is on max detail and very smooth indeed - no issues.

64 player maps do drop the frames a little but not less than 40fps so pleased to say the least.

I will sell up when the 7 Series arrive mind as I like messing about with new stuff!

Kotu · 1 Dec 2011 at 23:15

Don't bother with crossfire, I upgraded to it and it only seems to gain on older games which don't need that much power, for most the modern games it just won't work properly.

elrasho · 2 Dec 2011 at 01:05

Kotu said:
Don't bother with crossfire, I upgraded to it and it only seems to gain on older games which don't need that much power, for most the modern games it just won't work properly.

Can't tell you how wrong you are: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18323541&page=2