• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

5850 vs 4890

drunkenmaster said:
THe biggest question, when they come in stock, is how far they overclock, a same clocked 5850 basically performs equally to a 5870, they aren't shader limited, but ROP limited, ATi made the odd decision to make them 32 ROP aswell, rather than 24/28 ROP. If they overclock exactly the same as a 5870, then you are buying a 5870, just cheaper in need of further overclocking.

We'll have to see though, I've seen 5850's in reviews do default 5870 clocks, but depends how high the max clocks of each card come in.

4850's just didn't(AFAIK) clock near a 4870 and miles away from a 4890. but most significantly had a massive bandwidth difference. These have the same mem, same amount of mem and only the dropped shaders and clocks. Its completely not shader limited, so its basically just a lower clocked version, if they hit the same clocks they are a freaking steal, and easily worth the extra £50.
Click to expand...

The 4850 can clock quite closely to the 4870 provided you were using a tool other than CCC, because CCC's limit was very low. This is particularly true for certain non-reference 4850's.

For example:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_4850_PCS/29.html

I would've bought a 4850 1GB, actually, but they typically weren't very good for the price when I bought my 4870.
 
heh I bought a 4850 on release day and pencil modded it to run 880MHz 1.39V and 1175mhz on the memory...I was only gaming at 1680x1050 so it performed very close if not just the same as a 4890.

But yes without any voltage increase most reference 4850s did not get much past 700-720 although as stated there were a few that clocked better.
 
your q6600 @ stock is by far the weakest link in a 5850 system. Clocking it to a mere 3.2-3.4ghz would help quite a bit, especially when it comes to minimum framerates and such.
 
gurusan said:
your q6600 @ stock is by far the weakest link in a 5850 system. Clocking it to a mere 3.2-3.4ghz would help quite a bit, especially when it comes to minimum framerates and such.
Click to expand...

If I could I would but my motherboard is not capable of overclocking haha neither the RAM oh well, will still be good
 
yep any moden card a 3.0 ghz cpu is a must really.

i can feel difference straight away in fps games.

me and my friend when he got his 4870x2 (had a q6600) did a test from stock to what hes got clocked now 3.2 and the difference was quite large on some games.
 
Well it sounds like he doesn't have a choice at the moment....although I'm not sure what kind of boards can't get a q6600 to a measly 3ghz, unless it's an OEM board.

Put it next on your list though!
 
Why buy old tech ? you got the bonus of dx 11, lower power usage ati Eyefinity if you want to add more monitors, once they release better drivers am sure we will see big improvements and you get Dirt 2 with it what more can you want.
 
Last edited:
gurusan said:
Well it sounds like he doesn't have a choice at the moment....although I'm not sure what kind of boards can't get a q6600 to a measly 3ghz, unless it's an OEM board.

Put it next on your list though!
Click to expand...

ahaha I didn't want to be shamed but yes it's an OEM board *hangs head in shame

Yeah my setup goes like this:
-Q6600 stock (From original Acer desktop)
-Motherboard with G965/P965 chipset not sure which one (From original Acer desktop)
-2GB cheap kingston RAM + 2GB (From original Acer desktop)
-TX650W (Added since)
-Creative gamer sound card (Added since)
-Sapphire 4850 to be replaced by you know what :p (Added since)
-1TB WD Caviar Black (Added since)
-Antec 300 (Replaced crappy Acer case)
-Got Windows 7 coming for cheap!

Yeah the Acer desktop was a mistake lol bought in 2007 by my dad :D, I'm now 18 so all the other parts were bought by me, I will probably leave the setup as it is now and let it mature until it gets real old then I will just start from scratch with a new build
 
Last edited:
well I don't want to get you down but unless you are gaming at a stupid high resolution I'm not sure you are going to notice a whole lot between a 4850 and 5850
 
Well you will see higher fps be able to use higher AA straight away even at 1680x1050 you can see clearly on the reviews this, small overclock and you got a cracker of a card which pulls it close to the 5870 for £100 cheaper god knows why there is so much negativity about this card.
 
I am not being negative about the card at all, I'm saying that a 2.4ghz 65nm core 2 duo will severely limit the performance....

There was someone posting up the other day with a stock e6600 and a 4890, he added another one in CF and couldn't even tell the difference...once he clocked it then he saw massive gains. CPU limited may be a term thrown around too loosely but that's not to say it does not exist!
 
your q6600 @ stock is by far the weakest link in a 5850 system. Clocking it to a mere 3.2-3.4ghz would help quite a bit, especially when it comes to minimum framerates and such
Click to expand...
.

I am not saying you are wrong but can you or anyone else show evidence of this assertion ?

Clearly a faster chip will give improvements but I would be very interested to see for instance a comparison between a 4890 at 3.0 and a 5850 at 2.4 on a quad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom