5870 or 5850

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Heir

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Jun 13, 2010
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Well, to start this, I'm confused to buying either ATI 5850 or 5870. I am buying a completely new build. An AMD Phenom II x4 965 processor and probably an Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 Mobo, 800 Watt PSU. Im on a budget but willing to spend $100 more for a 5870. So which should I buy?
 
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Heir

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Jun 13, 2010
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well, i might plan to overclock if i want more fps for my FPS games, but other than that im looking for a video card thats balanced with my Mobo and CPU.
 
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leon2006

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Feb 12, 2006
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If you have the money now get the 5870. A single card solution is always better than 2 cards(less heat, power). In the long run 5870 is better. Plus in the future if you plan to crossfire another 5870 will be even better.

Yes you can CF 2 5870.

Its your decision.
 
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wolfram23

wolfram23

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Apr 12, 2010
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CF 5870s are better, but it's also at least $200 to $300 more. I'm running CF 5850s and seriously, it's all anyone needs right now. The only game to not let me run absolute maximum settings is Metro 2033, the choice is either AAA+DOF (DX11) or 4xMSAA+No DOF. DOF is basically the feature that brings things into focus and blurs the rest, but it does it anyway with DOF off just maybe a little less... sophisticated? I don't know, but with Very High 4xMSAA, DX11, Tesslation on, Depth of Field off, 16x AF the game runs smooth over 50fps except for very few places it drops down but 80% of the game it's over 50fps most tunnels are 60fps. And just fyi AAA vs 4xMSAA the difference is that AAA doesn't do vertical and horizontal lines well, but it's good with curved or diagonals (I don't know why) so some objects you can tell where the AAA isn't working very well. 4xMSAA everything looks smooth and awesome.

Anyway, it all comes down to budget. If you can afford CF 5870s then do it. If you want still amazing performance and save a few hundred bucks go with CF 5850s. If you don't want to crossfire right now but maybe down the road, the 5870 will be a better card and maybe you can CF it later... it's all up to the OP.
 
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jijoslin

jijoslin

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Mar 22, 2010
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I agree with wolfram23, I'm also running cf 5850's on a crosshair 3 mobo with 955 be cpu, my gpu's are at stock speeds and still I get great gaming results, I'd go with the 5850's unless you have no budget concerns, most benchmarks will show you only a marginal difference in cf 5850's and cf 5870's
 
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OvrClkr

OvrClkr

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Jul 2, 2009
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I have a single 5850 normally OC'ed to about 1000/1275 1.24v & x4 B50 @ 3.8Ghz mainly to play BC2 and Warhead and I am getting ridiculous frames @ 1680x 1050. Of course all settings maxxed out w/o any AA or AF (Warhead), I could only imagine what dual 5850's would offer, I would have to upgrade my screen/res before I do that.

Would be nice to know the res and what games the OP plays...
 
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jijoslin

jijoslin

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Mar 22, 2010
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I noticed in your system specs it says gt240 physx ppu, what is this for?
 
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wolfram23

wolfram23

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There's about 11 games out right now that allow GPU accelerated PhysX for some extra bells and whistles. The GT240 was on sale for $65 so I figured I'd give it a try. It definitly adds cool effects, you can easily YouTube some comparison videos for Batman: AA, Mirror's Edge, Metro 2033, Dark Void, and Cryostasis. I wouldn't really recommend anyone doing this for just the few games that really use it right now, but it looks like the Bullet physics engine is also finally going to allow GPU acceleration so maybe in the next year or two we'll see a lot more support for it.

(btw PPU = physics processing unit)
 
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wolfram23

wolfram23

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Yes, an extra PCIe slot is required. Mine is only running at 4x lanes and it's sufficient. From what I can tell using FluidMark stress test the PPU can't go over 83% usage (I think due to being on 4x PCIe lanes) but the highest stress it's ever had was in Batman AA at 50%. Every other PhysX game has been no more than about 15%.

PhysX is a propietary thing for Nvidia. And they do not support hybrid set ups (ATI+Nvidia). In fact they have it written in their drivers to disable their GPUs if it's in a system that also has an ATI card. There's an easy patch to get around it called the GenL PhysX Mod (V1.03 is the newest). PhysX can not and will not run on an ATI card due to hardware differences. You can still run it off the CPU sometimes but it's nowhere near as fast as off a GPU (due to the significant amount of stream processors vs a few cores)
 
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wolfram23

wolfram23

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All of them, the 5850s are doing all the rendering and the PhysX card is only doing the special effects. With Nvidia cards, on the midrange ones, if you run PhysX it can horribly reduce your FPS so it can be worthwhile to run a dedicated PhysX card. Since I have ATI cards, I wouldn't even have access to PhysX at all but now I get all the little eye candy additions lol. If you youtube some videos for Batman AA, Cryostasis, Mirror's Edge, Dark Void and a few others you can find comparisons of PhysX on and off to see what sort of effects it adds. Mostly it's things like realistic smoke that doesn't just sit there looking pretty as in most games, but that you can actually move and it swirls around as you move through it. Also adds very good cloth movement and tearing effects and other particle effects.
 
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