5770 or 4890?

[Bigdogbmx]

Wow a fair few people have opinions on this eh!
Really I dont think power consumption is a huge issue for me, unless we are talking like 50W or something. I havent read anything on DX11 as Ive got lazy in that respect, but is it going to be something to worry about? I mean DX10 came around and I used it about 3 times on crysis and my PC still crapped its pants about the same as with DX9.
To Mr Krugga when you said you wouldnt buy either, how come? Is there something better around in the price range I should look at? I really only thought of these two as I have a xfire board so it made sense if I wanted to upgrade later. If Nvidia has a better single card solution at this price I wont rule it out.

 

[Mr Krugga]

There's nothing better within 150 quid budget. But thats the point. We are being fed with those crappy prices on new graphic cards when Radeon 5850s can be easily bough for about 200 euros in Europe (which is about 180 quid). It's still more than in US where these cards can be had for 270 anywhere - just about 160 pounds. Better than that, prices of 5870 are so bad that they make me cry loudly. 380 USD (about £230) in so many places? Yeah, I know, we're on the island. That doesn't mean the prices will not go down rapidly when the time is right. 300 euros in Europe, that is still less than in the UK. And let's get to the point. New graphic cards are launched in series and priced for specific markets. There's still a huge gap between 5770 and 5850. And there must be a place for Radeon 5890 too. I say 5830 and price drops within 3 months. Don't expect it b4 Xmas unfortunately. Oh, and we're still counting on Nvidia to make a move. Radeons need a competition.

Not a good time to upgrade in my opinion. Unless you're building up a new system, so I did.

BTW GeForce 260 will perform better than 5770 at the same price

 

[z0mbi3]

Really I dont think power consumption is a huge issue for me, unless we are talking like 50W or something.

Actually, the power usage difference is quite significant. The 5770 uses 18 watts at idle and 108 under load. 4890 uses 60 watts at idle and 190 under load.

 

[Bigdogbmx]

Eeesh it nearly is 50W! As for it being a good time to upgrade, I hear you but when is it ever? I really only thought of buying a new GFX card because I want a new monitor and it would be nice to ramp up all the settings to see it in its full glory.

 

[z0mbi3]

Well my 5770 certainly does a good job at 1680 x 1050, I can't comment on higher resolutions though.

 

[wiak]

get a 5850 you fool ;P

 

[MeddlE]

you could probably close the gap with clocking

And increase the gap by clocking the 4890. The Asus card I linked to has hit over 950 core in every review I've read, some even hitting 1000 core. Haven't tried with mine yet but will sure as hell be giving it a go.

 

[OCP]

5770, if there isn't enough juice (which i doubt) then get another for Xfire.

 

[Mr Krugga]

And forget about saving power. As far as I've read, overclocking 5770 indeed closes the gap. The gap between 5770 and 4870. And you can overclock 4870 further. There's no way 5770 will be performing better than 4890. Sad but true.

 

[z0mbi3]

And forget about saving power. As far as I've read, overclocking 5770 indeed closes the gap. The gap between 5770 and 4870. And you can overclock 4870 further. There's no way 5770 will be performing better than 4890. Sad but true.

I don't know why you think that as at stock in most benchmarks I've seen they pretty much match each other 1:1 (5770 - 4870 that is).

Also why forget about about power saving. OP said he was only bothered if the difference was 50 watts or so and it is.

Looking at th 5 series line up at the moment I think it's madness to pay roughly the same about for a last gen card when the performance differences are negligible, but then maybe that's a sign that now isn't the right time to upgrade.

 

[Toastor]

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.

OK, so you believe that bandwidth > all. That's true when comparing like-for-like architectures. However, we're comparing a card which can utilise the more efficient DX11 rendering path to one which can't, and that's where the 5770 will catch up with the 4890. I agree that the 4890 is a better performing card right now, however I stand by my opinion that the 5770 is a better long-term purchase.

 

[HeX]

Also you have to remember that while the 5770 does indeed use 128bit interface, it also uses far faster GDDR5 than the 4 series.

I currently run my 5770's at 1325MHz mem = 4 x 1325 = 5.3GHz, which is a pretty conservative mem overclock for these cards.

Many people have gotten the memory over 1400MHz without much problem.

A stock 4870 only runs 3.6GHz mem, which everyone agrees is more than enough bandwidth and any extra is just gravy.

(256 / 8) * 3.6 = 115.2GB/s

Vs.

(128 / 8) * 5.3 = 84.8GB/s


Which is 74% of the mem bandwith of a 4870, and unless you are running very high res isn't really going to hold the card back.


Also the 5770's overclock their cores like champions, I get 960MHz (max CCC allows) on stock volts. Using ASUS bios and a small volt bump these cards break 1GHz+ no fuss, I can run my cards at 1050MHz all day long.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

The 5770 is on par with the 4870, its only 2 frames slower in most cases, and thats with no drivers yet.

Be mad to buy a dearer old tech card now.

 

[Owenb]

Also you have to remember that while the 5770 does indeed use 128bit interface, it also uses far faster GDDR5 than the 4 series.

I currently run my 5770's at 1325MHz mem = 4 x 1325 = 5.3GHz, which is a pretty conservative mem overclock for these cards.

Many people have gotten the memory over 1400MHz without much problem.

A stock 4870 only runs 3.6GHz mem, which everyone agrees is more than enough bandwidth and any extra is just gravy.

(256 / 8) * 3.6 = 115.2GB/s

Vs.

(128 / 8) * 5.3 = 84.8GB/s


Which is 74% of the mem bandwith of a 4870, and unless you are running very high res isn't really going to hold the card back.


Also the 5770's overclock their cores like champions, I get 960MHz (max CCC allows) on stock volts. Using ASUS bios and a small volt bump these cards break 1GHz+ no fuss, I can run my cards at 1050MHz all day long.

GDDR5 has EDC(ECC) so while you might think you have a stable OC at 5.3ghz the EDC might be correcting them but eating into your bandwidth and reducing performance.

I keep changing my mind about this, but this review is pretty conclusive that the 5000 series is extremely bandwidth limited.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/775-7/dossier-amd-radeon-hd-5770-5750.html

They down clock a 4890 to have the same bandwidth as the 5770 and they are shown to have the very similar performance in dx9/10 games.
Of course while ATi can't improve the bandwidth they can improve the memory controller which can reduce which would result in the same thing. However it is unlikely that the 5770 will match the 4890 current games even with new drivers, but it might close the gap, and as battleforge showed it should outperform the 4890 if the game supports dx11.

In short, for outright performance go for the 4890, but for the better all round card go with the 5770.

 

[HeX]

GDDR5 has EDC(ECC) so while you might think you have a stable OC at 5.3ghz the EDC might be correcting them but eating into your bandwidth and reducing performance.

It isn't.

You can clearly see when ECC kicks in as your benchmark performance takes a nosedive.

That doesn't happen to me until I break 1350MHz on the mem, anything over that it starts to decrease performance.

Hence I use 1325 which I know is well below the memories error threshold.