***The Official ATI Radeon HD 5850 / 5870 Reviews and Discussion Thread***

[LeJosh]

Wow idle is ridiculously low

 

[The Asgard]

Its the drop off that gets me spending this money now on one and in 6 months they will be worth a fraction of the price.

And it's not like the current generation can't handle the games. That's the trouble with shiny new toys.

 

[Zenduri]

To be honest looking at the reviews if its bang for buck you want with performance above the 285 and as close to the 5870 as you can get the 5850 is a exceptionaly good option!

Within the next month ill be buying my new rig and if the 5870 drops to around £250 ill buy one otherwise ill take a 5850 and be a VERY happy chappy.
Almost all the performance of the 5870 at 2/3's the cost... cant go wrong!

 

[StevenRaith]

3dvision>eyefinity
lower noise output
better performance
physX support
9 months of gaming nirvana already

need i go on?

dont try to twist it guys, its pointless if you cant see whats in front of you. on the other hand the 5850 is a brilliant card with a great price.

Fo sho - if those simulated benches are accurate, then it will be 90% of the card for 66% of the money, which is stonking value given it's apparent 285 bothering qualities.

 

[rancid_elf]

Its the drop off that gets me spending this money now on one and in 6 months they will be worth a fraction of the price.

This has always and will always be the case. Have you ever bought a brand new car? Same thing happens.

Bottom line is if you are going to upgrade then when do you do it? When you do upgrade do you only go half the way?

We all have to upgrade at some time and when we do we will take whats best for us at the time. As someone else said why wait 9 months. I did nto wait 9 months I was going to upgrade about a month ago but decided I would hold off until this card arrived. Why pay for a 295 a month ago when I can buy ( in my mind ) a better card today.

Then maybe I could wait another 3-4 months and see what nVidia delivers. Problem is the nVidia card in 3-4 months time will probably be better than the 5870 but it will probably be another 100 notes dearer and I would have to do the "Wait 3-4 months" And as someone stated earlier about waiting 9 months...WHY WAIT

 

[gurusan]

And it's not like the current generation can't handle the games. That's the trouble with shiny new toys.

Yeah I should really grab a 2nd hand 4850 1gb and clock it to 800mhz or so as it will handle all games for awhile at my resolution....but I want a 5850!

 

[The Asgard]

The 5850 does look a nice card and may clock well. It could end up faster than the 5870 which seems to be pretty maxed out.

 

[Owenb]

I am sorry but saying the 5870 is twio 4870s on one die is like saying the next gen Nvidia will just be the 295 with a few extra transistors chucked in for good measure.

All new cards are based around previous ones with upgrades and inprovements.

It's not a criticism, it's just a fact. When a GFX card doubles nearly all key parts, SP/ROP's/texture units, and maintains clock cores I would expect a jump of nearly 100% not 60%. I can't see how drivers on a single GPU could be at fault, especially given that ATI have been developing drivers for similiar architectures for years now.
It's still a very good card, but has left me a little puzzled as to why it's not a bit faster.

 

[D13]

Vapor-X version soon by the look of it.

damn that looks cool, i hope that we see custom coolers before the end of the year

 

[Duran]

I think you're being a bit over-dramatic.

Waiting nine months for a new card release would have been retarded.

However, given that the new cards are now available, buying a 295 now would be a bit daft.

Anyone who has had one since release, or soon after, has had a very good run from it and should be more than satisfied.

i'm not talking about you personally but since the first month of the gtx 295 release there were lots of people that were claiming that the ati dx11 cards that are coming in a few months(ended up delayed) will render the gtx 295 obsolete and that its pointless to buy a gtx 295 etc. well it wasnt really...

 

[layte]

just let me get it straight: you guys have been waiting for the 5870 9 months and bashing nvidia for their insane prices only to save £30 and happily buy a worse performing gpu (5870) that is at the same time noisy with limited overclocking capabilities while the so called "foolish" gtx 295 owners have been enjoying their top gpu for months and months? fair enough, i rest my case.

Well, to be correct the 5870 is the fastest GPU, the 295 is the fastest single card, but the prize for the fastest single GPU (remember how NV fanboys were waving that card around when the X2 launched) is now with ATI.

 

[LeJosh]

The SSAA techniques looks stunning! Although performance with it on takes a huge hit.

Edit - as far as I'm seeing the 5870 is performing the same as a 295 and that's in crysis warhead... I thought that was in favour for nvidia. And it's a single GPU card...

 

[magicroundabout]

just let me get it straight: you guys have been waiting for the 5870 9 months and bashing nvidia for their insane prices only to save £30 and happily buy a worse performing gpu (5870) that is at the same time noisy with limited overclocking capabilities while the so called "foolish" gtx 295 owners have been enjoying their top gpu for months and months? fair enough, i rest my case.

tbh the 5870 from benches has come out and scared the 295 considering it is a SINGLE gpu and also £40 cheaper than the cheapest 295 on OCUK.

add that with the power saving over 12 months you have saved a bit of money already.

and if you have had your 295 for months you must have paid almost £400 for yours.

as for noise i refer you to a review i picked at random
http://hothardware.com/Articles/AMD-ATI-Radeon-HD-5870-Unquestionably-Number-One/?page=13

i like the line

Under load, the card's fan is audible, but we would not consider it noisy by any means.

oh edit: I rest my case

 

[drunkenmaster]

For those who were worried about x8/x8 potentially bottlenecking their P55 you can put that theory to rest now.

Theres one significant problem with that, which is, they didn't use a P55 or the on die PCI-e controller. Meaning those results are completely irrelevant, thats probably the best case scenario which is very good, but just because one controller does very well, that same controller with 2 cards might work differently, it doesn't take into account ANY cross communication, nor the extra workload being done by the controllers when two cards are connected.

Firstly, can the P55 perform the same with no little bugs or performance wrinkles in single card mode? Secondly, does adding a second card change those not because of the speed of the slots, but because the controller suffers? Take ssd's a nice vertex will get you x speed, but put 4 on the controller and you don't see 4 times the speed the controller is overloaded.

Considering they didn't test the P55, nor the controllers ability to scale with more cards, those results are fairly meaningless. yes the card doesn't need 16x pci-e slot bandwidth to perform fully, if that was the only question here that would be fine, but theres far more than bandwidth at play here which they haven't even considered.


Haven't reviews ALREADY shown that its slower with two cards on the P55, than on 2x 16x slots on other boards, meaning, if the cards don't need the bandwidth we already know the controller , or something, isn't working as well?

 

[Aod]

And it's not like the current generation can't handle the games. That's the trouble with shiny new toys.

frankly, i'm still on an 8800GTX and the only thing i can't run at a comfortable FPS 100% of the time is Crysis. i don't expect i'll upgrade my 8800 untill it breaks...

 

[Jabbs]

Don't get me wrong I have jumped on the bandwagon lots with new stuff, funny thing atm i only have a 8800gts 640 meg which was given to me and apart from the obvious games it plays games fine even at 1680x1050.

 

[drunkenmaster]

The SSAA techniques looks stunning! Although performance with it on takes a huge hit.

Everything I read said it made entirely no noticeable difference, except to performance, which makes it almost completely useless. IE you can use it in really old games where you have performance to burn, but IQ wise realistically there was no actual difference, same with the all angle AF, in the benchmarks it works perfectly in real world gaming you can't notice the difference at all.

 

[gurusan]

Theres one significant problem with that, which is, they didn't use a P55 or the on die PCI-e controller. Meaning those results are completely irrelevant, thats probably the best case scenario which is very good, but just because one controller does very well, that same controller with 2 cards might work differently, it doesn't take into account ANY cross communication, nor the extra workload being done by the controllers when two cards are connected.

Firstly, can the P55 perform the same with no little bugs or performance wrinkles in single card mode? Secondly, does adding a second card change those not because of the speed of the slots, but because the controller suffers? Take ssd's a nice vertex will get you x speed, but put 4 on the controller and you don't see 4 times the speed the controller is overloaded.

Considering they didn't test the P55, nor the controllers ability to scale with more cards, those results are fairly meaningless. yes the card doesn't need 16x pci-e slot bandwidth to perform fully, if that was the only question here that would be fine, but theres far more than bandwidth at play here which they haven't even considered.


Haven't reviews ALREADY shown that its slower with two cards on the P55, than on 2x 16x slots on other boards, meaning, if the cards don't need the bandwidth we already know the controller , or something, isn't working as well?

all good points. I'd imagine there will be some P55 scaling tests in the next few days that will tell us how these cards in particular do on 8x/8x.

 

[MoRT489]

Fo sho - if those simulated benches are accurate, then it will be 90% of the card for 66% of the money, which is stonking value given it's apparent 285 bothering qualities.

4890 has 285 bothering qualities and is 45% of the price!

Any 5850 crossfire reviews out?

 

[LeJosh]

Everything I read said it made entirely no noticeable difference, except to performance, which makes it almost completely useless. IE you can use it in really old games where you have performance to burn, but IQ wise realistically there was no actual difference, same with the all angle AF, in the benchmarks it works perfectly in real world gaming you can't notice the difference at all.

That's ok, I game with my face right up at the screen! /sarcasm

I'm not really fussed just the comparison photos looked nice.