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Gigabyte GeForce GTX 275 -OR- Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 5850 ???

MickeyBlue617

MickeyBlue617

MickeyBlue617

Associate
Joined
15 Dec 2009
Posts
36
Afternoon all,

bit of a novice, and could do with some advice on what would be the best out of these 2 cards:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 275 -OR- Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 5850

recently bought and set up a new build:
Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping @ 3.8ghz stable
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Intel X58
OCZ Gold 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3
Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB SATA-II
Corsair HX 850W ATX Modular
NZXT Lexa case.

currently using my old Nvidia 8800GTX in this set up.

i have the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 275 on pre-order. (i've always gone with Nvidia cards) however- while i've been waiting for the card to come back into stock, i've been looking at what seems to be the ATI equivalent.

trying to way up what would be the better choice of the two?
the more memory on the 275 against all the other figures that are higher on the 5850, PhysX with the Nvidia cards, but DX11 with the ATI. etc

any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
Well I've just ditched a 5850 and gone back to a GTX275 if that tells you anything.

Hardware was awesome but the drivers, as is far too often the case with ATI, were a travesty. Well documented crashes with white/grey screens at random points and BBC HD via DVB-S doesn't work at all.

The best hardware in the world is nothing without reliable drivers and ATI seem incapable of providing these at the moment. There are obviously loads of users without these problems but be aware that you may be one of the unlucky ones. By all means try your luck but if you want the safe option, stick with the NVidia.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Well I've just ditched a 5850 and gone back to a GTX275 if that tells you anything.

Hardware was awesome but the drivers, as is far too often the case with ATI, were a travesty. Well documented crashes with white/grey screens at random points and BBC HD via DVB-S doesn't work at all.

The best hardware in the world is nothing without reliable drivers and ATI seem incapable of providing these at the moment. There are obviously loads of users without these problems but be aware that you may be one of the unlucky ones. By all means try your luck but if you want the safe option, stick with the NVidia.
Click to expand...

For every person with "driver" problems, there'll be 10 people who have no issues at all.
 
A 5850 will blow the GTX275 away in performance terms by about 50%~.

As for the 275 having more RAM, I don't get how? The 5850 has 1GB of RAM versus 896MB of RAM for the GTX275.

As for Vertigo1's driver issues, you'll find just as many people with nVidia issues, it's just something that happens at times. I've had a very easy time with my ATi cards, no driver issues or anything.

Basically, what I'm saying is, don't take what people like Vertigo1 say with much importance (no offence of course) because it's not an accurate representation of the QA of the products.
 
I upgraded from a 8800gt to a GTX275 golden sample just before Xmas and the difference is massive. I got mine for £155 including delivery, when a 5850 was £230 or more. The price difference alone was enough to put me off a 5850 let alone all the posts in the forums at the time moaning about late delivery or broken 5850/5870 cards.
I would not pay the more than £165 for a GTX275 all the same.
 
kylew said:
A 5850 will blow the GTX275 away in performance terms by about 50%~.
Click to expand...

I recently played about with a 5850 and it was 30% better in games fps and benchmarks scores. Still a great increase considering the performance of the 275 (a superb card) but not 50%.

At the cost of them, the 5850 is the better option now. Though if its not vital to buy right now I would (and am) wait for Fermi to see what options open up then.

I too have had some Driver issues with two of ATi's new cards, and Ive only used two.
 
BIGBC said:
I recently played about with a 5850 and it was 30% better in games fps and benchmarks scores. Still a great increase considering the performance of the 275 (a superb card) but not 50%.

At the cost of them, the 5850 is the better option now. Though if its not vital to buy right now I would (and am) wait for Fermi to see what options open up then.

I too have had some Driver issues with two of ATi's new cards, and Ive only used two.
Click to expand...

It will of course be variable, however, the average performance difference should still be around 50%.
 
I stopped using nVidia's cards due to driver problems lol and have had no problems with ATi, I would go for the HD5850 as its more recent tech, the 275 is now obsolete (imho) and who knows when the fermi boards will come out? (nVidia don't even seem to know)
 
How about getting another 8800GTX cheap for SLI if that motherboard supports it? and waiting for the next gen nVidia cards... 8800GTX SLI would in most cases be around the same performance as a single 275 and a lot cheaper than buying one new now.
 
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My advice is to try the 5850 (as you have 7 days, so nothing to lose), as its the only way yer really going to know if its going to work fine for you.
 
kylew said:
As for Vertigo1's driver issues, you'll find just as many people with nVidia issues, it's just something that happens at times. I've had a very easy time with my ATi cards, no driver issues or anything.
Click to expand...
Yes, everyone has issues with drivers but what you don't get with NVidia is well documented problems experienced by shedloads of users and reported extensively but for which they provide no fix at all.

The white/grey screen crashing and "display driver has stopped responding" issue with ATIKMDAG.SYS is one particular problem which I've experienced twice on two different machines and which has been reported by a great many users yet for which there is no fix. I am aware of no single issue with NVidia's cards/drivers which is as prevalent or for which no fix has been offered.

As for the other issue, with BBC HD DVB-S, this problem affects virtually all ATI cards since the 2000 series. This isn't a random issue that you may or may not get, it's experienced by literally every user and has been happening for nearly six months now, yet ATI offer no fix. Apparently it's since the encoding on BBC HD via Freesat was changed in August last year and ATI are blaming Microsoft. Regardless of who's fault it is, the fact remains that ATI cards are affected whilst NVidia's aren't so, if this is important to you, you need to be aware of it.

I'm no NVidia fanboy, having owned plenty of ATI cards up to and including the 5850, I've just been burned far too many times by their lacklustre drivers for it to be a coincidence. Yes, everyone has issues and what works for some won't work for others but the fact remains that these two specific issues are biting an awful lot of ATI users, so caveat emptor.
 
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kylew said:
It will of course be variable, however, the average performance difference should still be around 50%.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was variable. Best I saw was 36% increase - average was 30%.
What are you basing 50% on?
Even looking at others benchmarks nowhere seems to be claiming 50% increases.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Yes, everyone has issues with drivers but what you don't get with NVidia is well documented problems experienced by shedloads of users and reported extensively but for which they provide no fix at all.

The white/grey screen crashing and "display driver has stopped responding" issue with ATIKMDAG.SYS is one particular problem which I've experienced twice on two different machines and which has been reported by a great many users yet for which there is no fix. I am aware of no single issue with NVidia's cards/drivers which is as prevalent or for which no fix has been offered.
Click to expand...

What rubbish, firstly Nvidia have their own version of ATIKMDAG.SYS of which the Nvidia version was accountable for more crashes in Vista than anything else, and despite the larger market share, the percentage increase in crashes caused by Nvidia drivers was FAR beyond the market share advantage they had.

IE if there were 4 nvidia cards sold for every 2 ATI, you'd expect there to be twice as many Nvidia crashes as AMD as twice the number of cards, however their crashing in Vista was, in this example far far beyond twice the number of crashes. They are stastically proven to be the least stable drivers and their version of this particular crash is more frequent.

Even then, its still not that frequent and neither is AMD's, there are ALWAYS problems Nvidia have that they don't fix, just like AMD.

Shockingly a fix for something that 3 people have problems with, like BBC HD maybe, is FAR less important a fix than something thats effective 50 people, and thats less important than a bug/problem that effects 10k users, which is a lower priority fix than something like a bug in a newly released game you'd expect 100k's of people to be playing.

Nvidia and AMD have entirely no difference in the priority of their fixes and to pretend otherwise is silly.

Both have their share of driver problems, neither is better nor worse, just because one problem you have, is not a problem on one set of hardware over another and its the only bug you found that affects you, switching hardware doesn't magically fix every other bug the drivers have you simply don't run into.

Right now the 5850 is without question the better value, better performance, better featured and better future proofed card, its a non argument. Get a 5850, IF you have a problem with it, send it back, don't see the problem.

Entirely nothing to say you won't buy a 275gtx and find a problem with your setup and have to send that back. Hardware is different, errata in cores is different, powerplay type issues that effect both companies, are different from one generation to another. A 8800gtx working perfectly is entirely no guarentee that a 280gtx would work perfectly with the same set of drivers in the same system on the same software.

Same way a perfectly working 4850 would indicate a 5850 would work perfectly, by the same logic a crappy buggy 8800gtx is no reason to believe a 280gtx would suck, and a crappy 4850 would be no indication a 5850 would also suck in your system.
 
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