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5850 or 5870?

Associate
Joined
5 Jan 2005
Posts
753
Location
South East, UK
99% of the time my pc will be used for processing 12mp RAW images with Lightroom and editing AVCHD home movies (hobbys - completely non-professional). When choosing a graphics card will i benefit from the extra horsepower in the 5870 over the 5850? Normally i don't mind spending a bit extra since I keep the stuff for a few years and it all evens out over time. However, there is a seriously big price difference between these two cards and so i had to ask the question!

FYI - the rest of my system will be i7 overclock bundle from OCUK.

Cheers,
Dub
 
Associate
Joined
30 Apr 2009
Posts
688
Although the only benchmarks of the 5850 have been synthetic [a 5870 softmodded to 5850 specs - clocks dropped, cores disabled] it suggests that the 5850 is 80-90% of the power of the 5870 for 66% of the price.

If you aren't doing serious gaming or pro graphics work and would just appreciate some extra grunt for phot and video editing then I'd go for the 5850; bonus being that once the apps you use start implementing DX11 DirectCompute shaders, chances are that will make things even quicker.
 
Associate
Joined
5 Feb 2007
Posts
734
i think i will get the 5850 aswell is stead of the 5870,because i think gaming at 1680X1050 will be wasted with that 5870,So that 5850 will be better then my 8800gt anyway lol
 
Soldato
Joined
28 Aug 2006
Posts
3,003
As far as i was aware, the 5850 and 5870 use the exact same gpu only the 5850 is clocked slower. Feature wise nothing has been dropped.

I can only assume that the gpu in the 5850 failed on the higher clocks but is fine on the lower clock.

Intel/AMD use a similar tact when offering slower clocked similar CPUs.

Just my speculation.
 
Associate
Joined
30 Apr 2009
Posts
688
As far as i was aware, the 5850 and 5870 use the exact same gpu only the 5850 is clocked slower. Feature wise nothing has been dropped.

I can only assume that the gpu in the 5850 failed on the higher clocks but is fine on the lower clock.

Intel/AMD use a similar tact when offering slower clocked similar CPUs.

Just my speculation.

More or less, but the 5850 has less shader engines too - not by much though.
 
Associate
Joined
30 Apr 2009
Posts
688
I'm in the same situation. I'm gaming at 1680x1050 and have 8800gt. I'm wondering if I should get 5850 or 4890.

5850 is faster than the 4890 by [what I consider to be] a noticable margin:
[stats gained with an 'emulated' 5850 - aka a softmodded 5870 with the clocks dropped and the shader engines reduced to 5850 spec]
perfrel.gif


Use that as you will - that's averaged out from about a dozen game FPS tests over all resolutions.
 
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