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5770 or 4890?

Bigdogbmx

Bigdogbmx

Bigdogbmx

Associate
Joined
25 Sep 2003
Posts
456
Location
Leeds
Im looking at a gfx upgrade and I need some good advice please! These 2 look like good deals and I have a 4850 at the moment so a decent increase over that would be nice. My board is a P35 too so has xfire slots but I wont necessarily use that unless it will be the best way to get more fps at 1920x1200. Other thing is I have a 580W Hiper and would like to keep that if possible.

Cheers, BDBMX.
 
580W PSU is plenty for a 5770 or 4890.

I went for the 5770 as I wanted a quieter GPU which uses less power (the 4890 is very hungry even at idle). No complaints so far :)
 
Personally, I would go for the 4890, it is a more powerful card and will give more FPS, although it is not DX11 compatible, if that matters, and sucks more power than the 5770. The 5*** series are more energy efficient than the 4*** series.

Your PSU won't have any problems powering either card.
 
My choice between the two would be the 5770. It is a far more power efficient card and runs very quietly, and both of those are important to me. The cool power efficient running make it a good candidate for Crossfiring too if you decide to go down that route in the future. It has the benefit of DX11 support, and I believe that future driver improvements will allow it to match the 4890 in performance.
 
Toastor said:
I believe that future driver improvements will allow it to match the 4890 in performance.
Click to expand...

Really? That sounds impressive considering it's performance does not even match the 4870.

No amount of driver tweaking will compensate for the fact that the 5770 has a 128-bit GDDR5 interface, whilst both the 4870 & 4890 have a 256-bit GDDR5 interface.

Somehow I doubt the 5770 will ever match the 4890, the memory bandwidth just isn't physically available.
 
Aren`t the specs of the 5770 hardware better than the 4890 except for memory bandwidth? I don`t know, but I thought I read that was the case. I think the 5770 has potential, not sure the lack of the memory bandwidth will hold it back that much.

We`ll see. I bought a 5770 as I`m not a heavy gamer and looking for energy savings where possible and it at least opens the door to DX11.
 
Apparently Catalyst 9.11 is going to bring a significant performance improvement - so we will have to wait and see.
 
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I'd get a 5770, but wait until they move away from reference designs. At the moment there is no real innovation in the designs, and once you start seeing factory overclocked boards including the memory to overcome that bottlekneck, you should start to see some fast cards at better value.
 
GK7 said:
Apparently Catalyst 9.11 is going to bring a significant performance improvement - so we will have to wait and see.
Click to expand...

How much of a difference I wonder, enough to equal or better the HD4870?

How does the HD5770 perform compared to the HD4870?
 
GK7 said:
Apparently Catalyst 9.11 is going to bring a significant performance improvement - so we will have to wait and see.
Click to expand...

Hope the released version has more tricks than the beta 9.11. I installed that yesterday to see if it fixed a problem I`m seeing and while installed I ran the Res Evil 5 variable test and the 9.11 beta drivers lost consistently 1-1.5 FPS over a number of tests compared to the 5770 released drivers.
 
SFFNoob said:
How much of a difference I wonder, enough to equal or better the HD4870?

How does the HD5770 perform compared to the HD4870?
Click to expand...

Performs around the same as the 4870 - mabye slightly better, but the real advantage is the low power consumption, temperatures and noise.
 
Oh gosh, I hate people trying to force buying 5770 stating that it's faster than 4870 and it will match 4890 in performance when Catalysts are improved. It's not and it won't. It will outperform 4870 by few frames perhaps but will not get any close to 4890 when gaming at higher resolutions. It is not the software issues that the card do not perform best - it's the 128-bit bandwidth which won't change and will slow the memory and possible card performance. Of course there is a Crossfire option too but apparently for both cards. The card is to be taken into consideration but don't try to make a performance monster at the price because it is not :( If you don't need new features this card provides, getting 4870 is just cheaper and after OC you will outperform 5770 significantly.

If I got to choose between those cards now, I wouldn't choose any.
 
If you use a monitor other than a standard 75hz LCD go for the 4890.

The new ati drivers don't support over 85hz. I had to send my 5770 back because it wouldn't get 120hz...
 
Mr Krugga said:
Oh gosh, I hate people trying to force buying 5770 stating that it's faster than 4870 and it will match 4890 in performance when Catalysts are improved. It's not and it won't. It will outperform 4870 by few frames perhaps but will not get any close to 4890 when gaming at higher resolutions. It is not the software issues that the card do not perform best - it's the 128-bit bandwidth which won't change and will slow the memory and possible card performance. Of course there is a Crossfire option too but apparently for both cards. The card is to be taken into consideration but don't try to make a performance monster at the price because it is not :( If you don't need new features this card provides, getting 4870 is just cheaper and after OC you will outperform 5770 significantly.

If I got to choose between those cards now, I wouldn't choose any.
Click to expand...

Assuming you're right for a moment, you could probably close the gap with clocking, and you'd have the benefits of lower power consumption and DX11 support.
 
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No offence but you probably got into the whole hype around it.

Anyways, as long as the conversation is based on facts, I dont mind happy 5770s owners around ;)
 
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