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5850 vs 5870 - My Results & Opinions

Just thought I would add my results to this great thread. I'm running currently a single XFX Black Edition 5850 flashed with the Asus/Msi unlocked Bios, currently @ 1125/900/1200 and my 3dVantage score was 20354 @ 1920 x 1200. No AA etc. My Unique Heaven bench comes out @ 37fps @ same resolution. Its a great card IMO, looking to xfire now.
 
Nice post, good information. There is always a but though......

Bench's are nice, in the real world of eyefinity resolutions however, my Sapphire 5870 based machine (which is identical to my mates machine bar the GPU where he has a Asus 5850) The 5870 crushes the 5850 in pure playability, often allowing extra detail or extra AA settings @ 5760x1080. Ill add, his 5850 will not make 1000core, even with voltage tweak, so they definatly all wont.

Another aspect is, in australia the price difference is closer to 20%, making the 5870 much much more attractive.

So excellent post and as expected the 5850 will perform pretty close to the 5870 @ the same speeds (they are the same chip afterall) untill you hit them with heavy shader apps (crysis being one, but the games will only get more and more complex)

So the findings :

not all 5850's will make the desired core speeds
It takes a eyefinity set up or 8xAA on single monitor setups to truly use the extra shaders of a 5870
In australia at least, the price difference is between 20% and 25%
You can overclock the 5870 to still spank the pants off the 5850 anyway.
The 5870 is more future proof in both single and crossfire configs (the 5870cf being the fastest dual GPU soluition avaliable.

So in australia at least where the price difference is relativly low (compared to the world) the 5870 is definatly the card to get


edit: tonight after work ill endevour to get some hard numbers, i have no reason to think they wont back up the seat of the pants o meter though.
 
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Dunno m8, I buy from an AU site that specializes in gear for your PC case and the difference there is 30% ($399 v $559 AUD). True you can get cheaper prices at a PC market - but the margin stays the same.
 
As an example of street price

400 v 520, there is a bit of variance between vendor's as usual .Lets call it between 20 and 30%. Still worth it for the reasons i quoted above imo. 40-50% more cost would be a hard sell though so i can understand people wanting 5850's for those prices.
 
The_au_viper said:
You can overclock the 5870 to still spank the pants off the 5850 anyway.
The 5870 is more future proof in both single and crossfire configs (the 5870cf being the fastest dual GPU soluition avaliable.
Click to expand...
Please believe me that a 5870 will not spank a 5850. Even with both cards at stock speeds the 5870 is only a fifth faster. I agree that 5870's will generally overclock better than 5850's and that the extra 10% shaders will improve FPS by a few percent, but with both overclocked to the max the difference is likely to be less than 10% in real terms. Only benchmarks would make a 10% increase in FPS apparent.

I am not knocking the 5870. It is a great card, but for most people it is not worth 40-50% more money (or 30% if you are one of those people who used to borrow our Ashes:D).
 
Id like to believe you, but in reality it hasnt worked out that way. My very good mates 5850 just dosent come close. Bear in mind we are operating @ 5760x1080 resolution.

For me the difference was 22% in price, which is well worth it. I also agree, 40-50% more money is asking a bit much for a card that CAN come close in performance.

As i explained, its the difference between 0xAA and 2xAA at eyefinity resolutions. the difference between max settings and "almost max" settings. Granted there will be little difference at say 1920x1080, so it wouldnt make sense to pay 40% more money for a card that at that resolution would be similar.

The extra shaders will make more of a difference as time goes on. 5850, great card, but at the end of the day, isnt as fast and for me at least isnt fast enough @ 5760x1080.

My mate agrees and just bit the bullet and got another 5850 to run in crossfire, one just wasnt fast enough even at the lower price.

Its all good, the aussie team are on fire atm, good luck coming to aus next summer ;)
 
I guess anyone who games at 5760x1080 is pretty extreme and would understandably desire (and probably afford) the absolute best. At such resolutions the extra shaders may indeed be more noticeable than at 1920x1080, but it is also just as possible that lack of physical memory or memory bandwidth will be the bottleneck (High Res plus AA is memory hungry). For the >99% of people who game at 1920x1200 or lower, I still believe there is little "notceable" difference between either card when clocked at same or similar speeds. I also think it likely that gamers who use 5760x1080 will find a single 5850 or 5870 "insufficent" and would be better suited to a crossfired or 5970 setup.

IMO the only people who should consider the 5870 over the 5850 are as follows.
i). Hardcore gamers and must-have-the-best enthusiasts
ii). People who do not want to overclock, but who require great performance.
iii). People who have too much disposable cash to be concerned about value.

I purchased the 5870 because of i), but sold it on and kept the 5850 because it just made better sense for me. I was fortunate enough to be able to test both within the same system.
 
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You won't find a game more shader heavy than crysis at max settings so run the crysis bench at 1680x1050 @ very high @ 5870 clocks and I will guarantee you the 5870 will eat the 5850 alive
 
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RavenXXX2 said:
You won't find a game more shader heavy than crysis at max settings so run the crysis bench at 1680x1050 @ very high @ 5870 clocks and I will guarantee you the 5870 will eat the 5850 alive
Click to expand...
See first post for this exact benchmark. At the same clocks the 5870 is 5.43% faster. At max OC (both cards) the difference is 7.4%. An overall 5-8% difference within a very shader intensive game seems pretty "similar" to me, but it may qualify as "Eating" to others.
 
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Well i tried the 5850 and 5870 at stock in Crysis and warhead benchmarks at max 1680x1050 and the 5850 just wasnt smooth compared to the 5870 so i went with the 5870 - regardless of the percentage difference the real world playability difference was noticeable.
 
creed said:
Well i tried the 5850 and 5870 at stock in Crysis and warhead benchmarks at max 1680x1050 and the 5850 just wasnt smooth compared to the 5870 so i went with the 5870 - regardless of the percentage difference the real world playability difference was noticeable.
Click to expand...
Out of interest, did you overclock the 5850 to similar levels as the 5870? I can understand a stock 5850 being noticeably slower but that would be caused mostly by slower clock speeds. If both were running at the same clocks I find it extremely unlikely differences would be noticeable. My benches showed a 1fps difference in min fps, and to be honnest both cards stuttered a little with settings on full and 4x/8xAA in certain scenes. Perhaps you had a sick 5850 which was throttling?
 
555BUK, your thread is one of the most enjoyable I have read in a while.

Even more important is I was just curious of my options for a new card :) and you my friend have decided it.

5850 is a no brainer next to the 5870. At stock its obvious the 5870 will pull ahead but WHO RUNS STOCK. hehe

Thanks dude. :)
 
The_au_viper said:
Id like to believe you, but in reality it hasnt worked out that way. My very good mates 5850 just dosent come close. Bear in mind we are operating @ 5760x1080 resolution.

For me the difference was 22% in price, which is well worth it. I also agree, 40-50% more money is asking a bit much for a card that CAN come close in performance.
Click to expand...

Price diff in AU is closer to 30% (as examples you paid like $520, and I paid $375).

Can you and your m8 run some benchies at 5760x1080, as otherwise you are contributing nothing concrete to this otherwise fact filled thread.
 
Quick question, read most of this thread and its been brilliant.

My max resolution is 1680x1050 and I try and run all my games at this, with my 4850 512mb I have to turn the settings down to low/med for some games. Would the 5850 be my best bang for buck upgrade or is it worth spending the extra on the 5870? Will I really notice the difference in performance between the two at the above resolution? Or will the 5870 be over kill? I don't tend to use AA/AF but that might change with a new card, probably because it effects performance with the 4850. I do overclock so would more than likely be overclocking the 5850 as well.

Games i'll mostly be playing will be Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead, Starcraft 2, Company of Heroes...

I know this thread has LOTS of information but just wondering what people would do.
 
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