*** Official OMG I've finally got my 5850 thread **

[milkamil]

Sapphire HD5850 vs Palit HD4850 with professional cooling system

 

[phr4n]

Is it just me.. I am noticing that I am getting some slight glitching on my monitor since installing the 5850, it happens very seldom - every 2 or 3 hours I notice it. For a split second I get a line (usually red) flash across the screen, it only seems 1 or 2 pixels wide and like I said is on for a split second, If I wasn't staring at the screen reading I wouldn't notice it. It happens on desktop, not to say not in games as I havent played that many and I likely wouldn't notice it, nor has it happened whilst playing video - (watched watchmen blu ray in its entirety last night) Anyone else seen this, could it be a driver issue? I know it isn't a PCi 1 issue but it could be a PSU issue, but when this card draws less than my previous 4 cards and the problem occurs during idle periods I'm a little flustered. Performance is spot on runs Cry-warhead all enthusiast at 1080p with 2xAA and no noticeable slowdown

 

[drunkenmaster]

Phr4n, is it probably as the memory speed changes in low power mode? download GPU-z, keep an eye on it and see if gpu/mem speeds are changing with the glitching.

Anyone happen to have weird mouse pointer after installing new drivers? Using the RC's from amd's site with a 5850, when I rebooted I got to windows and the mouse point is, HUGE, and fugly. In the mouse pointer options though theres standard, large and extra large, it only gets bigger not smaller.

Oddest issue I've ever seen, and surprisingly despit not being that big on the page, its incredibly distracting and weird to have such a huge pointer.

 

[Bluenose]

I'm guessing the 2 cables in that sapphire box are the power cable extension's ?

Don't get any cables or anything like that in the powercolor just a DVI to VGA adapter , crossfire bridge , driver cd and the steam dirt2 download leaflet.

 

[Andy Pandy]

My computer lives again . No more Pentium 3 PC

 

[drunkenmaster]

Well, the mouse got better, wanted to switch over to HDMI on my main screen, and dvi on the second screen, which for some reason fixed the mouse issue(it was vga on a dvi convertor before).

I managed to disable the multimonitor powerplay settings, which are be default higher clocks than single screen power play, it dropped idle power by some 20-25W, but wasn't stable for some reason, lots of flickering on the second screen just when clicking on windows and other stuff, moving video playback to the other screen caused a crash.

So messing with default clocks(powerplay low power ones at least, not overclocked clocks) is an issue for now.

I commend the powerplay stuff, both Nvidia/amd/intel versions, saving power at idle is a nice thing. But I wish they simply gave you some options with various clocks you can manually click, without the constant up/down of clocks that is constantly changing.

Still uses less power at idle than the default powerplay clocks in the same setup using a 4890.

 

[craig3000]

Loving my HIS 5850

 

[TaKeN]

Radeon 5850 and a box of tissues, thats what I use for my sexual issues.

Niiice, I'm waiting for the Asus voltage tweak version though

 

[craig3000]

Radeon 5850 and a box of tissues, thats what I use for my sexual issues.

Niiice, I'm waiting for the Asus voltage tweak version though

I'm about to try the MSI afterburner, I'm not sure if I would want to increase the voltage (don't like the risk ) but I am going to overclock right now! Hopefully I can get 825mhz and a good increase on the memory

 

[RavenXXX2]

My HIS, don't take the mick outta my Acer board

HAHAHA..Acer..








Nah, decent system you got, 5850 looks the business.

 

[TaKeN]

I'm about to try the MSI afterburner, I'm not sure if I would want to increase the voltage (don't like the risk ) but I am going to overclock right now! Hopefully I can get 825mhz and a good increase on the memory

I read something about the 5850 having overvoltage protection built in? and that if you push the memory too far.. you actually won't realise as there is no artifacting and you'll get less FPS.

 

[craig3000]

Yeah the build quality is fantastic

 

[craig3000]

I read something about the 5850 having overvoltage protection built in? and that if you push the memory too far.. you actually won't realise as there is no artifacting and you'll get less FPS.

Yeah it applies to the video memory only I think it was called EEC not sure its in a lot of the 5870 reviews if you want to check it out

Best way to know is overclock the memory as you would but instead of looking for artifacts you look for performance decreases, so you would need to do some benchmarking really and average out, the bandwidth with GDDR5 is high anyway, I'm more interested in the core clock

 

[fornowagain]

I read something about the 5850 having overvoltage protection built in? and that if you push the memory too far.. you actually won't realise as there is no artifacting and you'll get less FPS.

That's right, over voltage protection and memory error correction.

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009/09/2...ies-graphics-cards-designed-by-the-community/

With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series we’ve implemented a hardware-level overvolt protection scheme where a signal from the regulators can be fed into the GPU directly and the GPU can take action if the regulators indicate they are operating out of their specification. In the unlikely event that such a scenario happens, rather than the board turning off, the GPU is designed to clock down to get the regulators back into a normal operating zone and then clock back up when they have done so.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_5850/32.html

As mentioned in the HD 5870 article, overclocking the memory on these cards is quite different from any other card so far. Normally you'd expect rendering errors or crashes, but not with these cards. Thanks to the new error correction algorithm in the memory controller, every memory error is just retransmitted until everything is fine. So once you exceed the "stable" clock frequency, memory errors will appear more often, get retransmitted, but the rendered output will still look perfectly fine. The only difference is that performance drops, the further you increase the clocks, the lower the performance gets. As a result a normal "artifact scanning" approach to memory overclocking on the HD 5800 Series will not work. You have to manually increase the clocks and observe the framerate until you find the point where performance drops.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

My Powercolour one has arrived. Shame my CPU is being RMAed at the moment (quality service so far from OcUK BTW) so I can't even test it out

Box contents is pretty spartan. The card, a million-language install leaflet, cross-fire connector and dvi-vga adaptor. Oh and of course Dirt 2.

Can't wait to get my CPU back to give it a whirl

 

[craig3000]

My Powercolour one has arrived. Shame my CPU is being RMAed at the moment (quality service so far from OcUK BTW) so I can't even test it out

Box contents is pretty spartan. The card, a million-language install leaflet, cross-fire connector and dvi-vga adaptor. Oh and of course Dirt 2.

Can't wait to get my CPU back to give it a whirl

It's a good card you will enjoy it

 

[Andy Pandy]

I am so impressed with the 5850. Arma 2 with virtually maxed settings and it runs like a dream. Will try Crysis tomorrow

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Hmm anyone with the Powercolour (or any of the others for that matter) find the backplate is a few centimetres too 'high', as in the L part of the bracket doesn't sit flush with the case? I've checked it's all the way in and seated and compared with another card, it's definitely not in the right place. Still, doesn't look like it will cause a problem (once I get a CPU so I can test it works!).

 

[wolvers]

Lovin seeing all the different makes of 5850 out and about now.

Are you gonna post some pics sid?

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Perhaps tomorrow, when I find a camera!

It looks just like all the other cards in this thread mind, except there's a picture of a bloke stuck on the cooler rather than a woman. I guess for the first generation of these cards everyone is sticking with the reference design.