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£150. Upgrade from a 5850?

Drake5

Drake5

Drake5

Soldato
Joined
12 Dec 2005
Posts
14,461
I currently have a 5850 1GB.

I will have £100 soon, I was thinking of selling the 5850 for £50, adding it to my £100 to have £150.

Now, my question. Is their anything on the 2nd hand market that would be a noticeable upgrade from the 5850 for £150?

Thanks
 
If you don't want 2nd hand currently there is a

EVGA GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (015-P3-1480-KR) [015-P3-1480-KR]

This Week Only Offer
was £184.99 inc VAT
£167.99 inc VAT
£139.99 ex VAT


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-124-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1830



Which will be a nice upgrade for new at that sort of price range.



Benchmark Results:-

AMD Radeon HD 5850 - 725MHz/4000MHz vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 - 700MHz/1401MHz/924MHz

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/295?vs=309
 
I wouldn't upgrade that just yet I don't think there's a need is there ? which game/games are struggling on it ? I'd certainly aim at double performance of 5850 ideally how about source a cheapo 5850 and xfire ? I mean an overclocked 5850 is probably close ish to that 480 i think that would be more of a diagonal upward sidegrade
 
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Wouldn't spend that kind of money of a 480.

Save up a little more and get a 7850 in the idea of overclocking and crossfiring in the future?
 
This might be more confusing than helpful but have been investigating upgrading my 5850 too and being a geek evolved into the following... :)

d4234.jpg


There are also a load of charts but this is probably sufficient for now.

I used the Bench on Anadtech to gather the scores, I only included 1680x1050 resolution since that's what my Samsung monitor outputs so anything else would be a waste right now and I don't think I'll be changing the monitor for another couple of years. I didn't include every test Anand has run, just the main gaming ones as all I really care about, I didn't include the 460 as the majority of comments make this card out to be too loud so not in consideration.

Only used OCUK to get the lowest price for a decent branded card, prob a few quid cheaper elsewhere but delivery, service and returns are worth the extra in my opinion.

I tried to get some metrics to show the average % increase in performance by upgrading, Starcraft II and Civ V seemed to give some odd results and are massively higher on Nvidia and the 7850/7950 so I worked out the average including and excluding this.

I then went on to work out the performance pound percentage, now this may be nonsense but I was trying to see how much of a % increase you get per pound spent on the card to see which was the best bang for buck. Again I did this with and without SCII and Civ V as I wasn't confident of the scores but to be honest I'm more likely to be playing stuff like Metro, Crysis and Batman so more relevant for me anyways.
 
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I say keep your 5850...nothing worth going for at £150 even on 2nd hand...unless you can find a good GTX580 1.5GB for £150 or less.

Performance increase on cards has been at snail pace over the last 2 gens. It's not that there's no good jump in performance...but the thing is the companies want extra £50-£100 for the performace increase, rather extra performance that should come free along with moving gen. Both the 7950 and GTX670 should be at the sub £240 price bracket, yet they are priced at around £300.
 
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Cheers guys,

I wouldn't really be interested in another 5850 in all honesty.

I think I could pick up a 7850 from the MM for about £160.

I don't really play to many demanding games but I'd like the FPS to be more consistent at times.

Could this just be normal loading assets? Could it be because I'm using a Sata 2 HDD from 2007? Would getting an SSD be a better option?

Thanks
 
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It's hard to say what might be casuing the lag spike without knowing which games it occurs in. Also, does it still occur if you turn graphics settings down a bit?

Personally I think paying £150 for the kind of upgrade you'd get with 6950/560 level of card is probably not worth it UNLESS quite a few of your games are borderline: your card doesn't quite play them well at the settings you want. In that case, getting an extra 20-50% of graphic power (which is about what your looking at with a 6950 on average) is worth it.

Edit: you've also had suggestions to pay a bit extra and get a 7850. Don't do it. The 7850 is a better card than the 6950, but they are so close in many games that you wouldn't notice it in actual game play. When you consider that it is £50 more, it's simply not worth it. (Though heavy overclockers might disagree. My opinion: never spend £200 on a card for what you think it might give; only buy what you know it will give - anything extra is a bonus.)
 
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Rusty0611 said:
Which game and what settings? Could be a VRAM ceiling...
Click to expand...

MeMeMeMe said:
It's hard to say what might be casuing the lag spike without knowing which games it occurs in. Also, does it still occur if you turn graphics settings down a bit?

Personally I think paying £150 for the kind of upgrade you'd get with 6950/560 level of card is probably not worth it UNLESS quite a few of your games are borderline: your card doesn't quite play them well at the settings you want. In that case, getting an extra 20-50% of graphic power (which is about what your looking at with a 6950 on average) is worth it.
Click to expand...


Is their anything I can use to see how much VRAM is getting used when playing?

Cheers
 
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Tom_D said:
It's such a minor thing though and the normal person might not notice it, but I'm VERY ocd so stuff like this gets up my nose.

It happens on I think every title I play but it's not a persistant thing, probably once every 5 minutes or so. It's usually when the FPS goes from 60 to something like 58, and then back up.

Is their anything I can use to see how much VRAM is getting used when playing?

Cheers
Click to expand...

Msi Afterburner will show you Vram usage.
 
VRAM shortage wouldn't cause that. You'd have massive spikes, making the game pretty unplayable.

If you are noticing it dropping form a contant 60 to 58, and this is bothering you, then either you have very very good eyes, or the frame rate monitor you are using isn't revealing the full picture.

This may be a vsync (or monitor refresh) related issue. If you have a 60Hz monitor, you might actually be better off spending your money towards a 120Hz monitor. Many people say their games play a lot smoother - less stuttery without the artificial cap of 60 interfering. Alternatively, an NVidia card with the new adaptive sync technology might help.

Personally in your position, I'd pick up a 120Hz monitor, try it for a week, then if it does't fix it, you know its not a sync issue and can return it under the DSR. If it does fix it, problem solved.
 
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