Good card and a ok price but Nv can beat it

[Yurihyuga]

I want to get a DX11 card to upgrade from my GTX 260 however I am going to wait for the Nvidia GT300 cards to come out to get a good comparision. A single GPU dx11 vs a single GPU dx10 isn't really a fair comparison, however no one can say the GT300 cards will actually beat the 5800 series either until benchmarks come and prove it.

Not to mention if Nvidia do actually beat them but only by a small margin and start charging high premiums for it, might then just go for the 5870 not to mention in 3-6 months time might start seeing 2GB versions of the 5870 or maybe a 5890 or 5870X2.

I think buying now is just too much of a rush and you just might not be getting the most out of your money.

However if needing a card now the 5850 is a good buy, beats the previous single GPU king the GTX 285(which even now is more expensive than the 5850 which to me is a joke)

 

[alexthecheese]

I think it's fair enough. Today the 5870 is about a match for a 295, but quite often is beaten. Who cares if it is a dual pcb card or whatever, when the performance is all that everyone cares about? In your mind it may be more efficient (and obviously is, power wise), but once it's slapped in your machine, the case is closed and you're playing a game... well, it doesn't matter then does it!

 

[Randell]

only amazing for the money to be fair

whcih is all we shoudl care about isn't it?

stop being hung up on performance of the GTX295. That is a DUAL set up. If the 5870 is soemtimes almost as fast, and occasionally faster, than it has acheived the general aim of being approx twice as fast as last gen, as you measure single chip against single chip. Not single chip against dual chip.

On a performance per buck basis the 5870 is better than the 295, which is the main criteria.

If you remember the 260/280 launch, the 280 didn't outperform the 9800GX2. This will now be a common occurence now that dual chip boards are mainstream products.

 

[cosmogenesis]

Its not all about games but its around 99% of the present requirement of a top notch grafix card.

I have heard of GPUs being used for many computational tasks in the future but its gonna take time, more time than this card has life.

 

[alexthecheese]

as you measure single chip against single chip. Not single chip against dual chip.

.

Well, you say that - but people are also talking about performance per £, which is more important to me. I couldn't give a stuff it was a dual chip or not!

 

[Duff-Man]

but once it's slapped in your machine, the case is closed and you're playing a game... well, it doesn't matter then does it!

I'm not sure that's true.

Having used both single and dual-GPU configurations of about every generation since the 6800s (well, all the nvidia generations and also the 4800s), I can tell you that "equal" performance on a single and dual GPU system is not truly equal. If a single GPU and a dual GPU card score the same in average-FPS benchmarks, then the single GPU card will "feel" faster. More consistent performance, no microstutter etc. You also aren't reliant on driver profiles, so you can play all of the new games on release without getting shafted.

Things have improved a *lot* since nvidia reintroduced SLI with the 6800 series, but it's far from being equal. I don't think it will ever be equal, and until both GPUs start operating on the same frame, rather than rendering alternate frames, there will always be a fair difference in gaming experience.

 

[StevenRaith]

Its not all about games but its around 99% of the present requirement of a top notch grafix card.

I have heard of GPUs being used for many computational tasks in the future but its gonna take time, more time than this card has life.

Proprietary GPGPUs like CUDA/Tesla have been getting used in the medical and engineering industry for a couple of years now - a chap I worked with was leeaving his web admin job to work on DNA structuring using Tesla and CUDA boxes.

DirectCompute [The DirectX variant], and OpenCL [the open source variant] are already out there - Win7 has is already and it's functional, apparently [drag a 1080p movie to your iPod Touch, and it automatically re-encodes it to suit via the GPU with no third party apps - it's basic functionality], and Mac OS X 10.6 [Snow Leopard] has Open CL as a core part of the OS.

All it needs is for some people to come up with things that are highly parallel [outside gaming, natch] such as CAD rendering, which get massive benefits, batch processing images, post processing and effects in image and film editing - all this stuff is initially going to start in the pro image editing/video editing/medical sectors and thier software packages, but it won't be long at all before GPGPU APIs are as commonplace as virtual folders and home network file sharing and bittorrent.

Win7 and Snow Leopard are the OSs that are going to take it mainsteream.

 

[magicroundabout]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ug3lM7uqK8

Just to confirm and hope ppl enjoy if they havnt already seen this

looks like i may wait for the Vapour X

 

[Randell]

Well, you say that - but people are also talking about performance per £, which is more important to me. I couldn't give a stuff it was a dual chip or not!

are people being deliberately thick today or has all the launch hype meant they took extra stupid pills?

Talk about quoted out of context.

That sentence is specifically about comparing performance from one gen to the other.

My very next sentence was

'On a performance per buck basis the 5870 is better than the 295, which is the main criteria'
as proven here http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870/32.html and another site I can't link too that shows bang for buck measurements

 

[alexthecheese]

are people being deliberately thick today or has all the launch hype meant they took extra stupid pills?

Talk about quoted out of context.

That sentence is specifically about comparing performance from one gen to the other.

My very next sentence was

'On a performance per buck basis the 5870 is better than the 295, which is the main criteria'
as proven here http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870/32.html and another site I can't link too that shows bang for buck measurements

I reworded the sentence with an edit, which doesn't help, but I was more focussing on the comparing single to non-gpu aspect that people don't like.

 

[D13]

Quote from techreports review:

The Radeon HD 5870 is the fastest GPU on the planet, with the best visual output, and the most compelling set of features. Yet it's still a mid-sized chip by GPU standards. As a result, the 5870's power draw, noise levels, and GPU temperatures are all admirably low

Enough said

Its strange because there are so many varying opinions from reviewers as to the noise output. Some say that it is basically a very quiet card indeed, others rate it being louder than a 4870x2, which sure as hell isnt quiet.

I am keen to hear from oc'ers who bought one to see how loud they think they are.

 

[Randell]

I reworded the sentence with an edit, which doesn't help, but I was more focussing on the comparing single to non-gpu aspect that people don't like.

Ok but either way I had covered both bases as I then went on to talk abut bang per buck and then pointed out it had happened before when the single chip GPU GTX280 was slower than the prior gen double gpu 9800GX2.

 

[rubin1961]

All in all these cards 5850/5870 are good cards and the price is pretty good.
When DX11 games start to appear more and better drivers are relesed then we will see these cards bloom.

 

[Seldarine]

poor troll is poor

 

[Andric]

Does he work for nVidia ?

yup probably a shill - read that nvidia has a large spend on viral marketing & pays peeps to go around umping nvidia/running down ati on tech forums

 

[Martini1991]

He does have a point but only the most optimistic expected the 5870 to blow the 295 out of the water most expected near as performance and thats what we have. Ramp up the settings and the 5870 can beat the 295 in a few games so not the big disappointment some are making out. Yes nvidia will beat this when they get gt3xx out the door and so they bloody should it will be a good few months away and if they can't beat this first gen dx11 card then they have major problems.

But they will be releasing about the time ati will be releasing the refresh of this card and i expect them to wait till nvidia do their launch. This card was never going to be a magical upgrade if you had a high end current gen card but most don't and this is a worthwhile upgrade for many so a bit of realism wouldn't hurt would it.

Also squirrel that last post of your s was completely uncalled for and says so much more about you then anyone else in this thread so please go and grow up and then come back with something worth saying and do us all including yourself a favour.

I agree with everything said here.

 

[TaKeN]

lol nvidia fanboi.

 

[cosmogenesis]

By the looks of it - its still games that matter. All this about parallelism sounds good but its restricted to a few specialised operations and functions and not a lot for home games players other than games.

I can imagine the card being used to crunch numbers in science.

 

[Kasc]

The 5XXX cards are currently the best bang for buck, AND THEY HAVE ONLY JUST BEEN RELEASED.

The end.

 

[Ludomudo]

i just love these nvidia fanboy threads! So funny...