Radeon HD 5850: Knocking Down GTX 295 In CrossFire

[cangelini]

The Radeon HD 5870 we reviewed last week was nice, but $379 in an economic downturn is the new $650. We want something bigger on value, and we're looking to ATI's new Radeon HD 5850 at $259 to stand up to Nvidia's $300+ GeForce GTX 285.

Radeon HD 5850: Knocking Down GTX 295 In CrossFire : Read more

 

[duckmanx88]

another great article. can you guy add these to your 2009 charts please. and the new i5 and i7 cpu's too please! =)

 

[jj463rd]

Quote "ATI has two cards that are faster than its competitor’s quickest single-GPU board. My, how times have changed." LoL

Yep I was looking at the Radeon 5850 especially CF'd for a build.
The Radeon 5870's seem a bit pricey to me so I'd prefer 2 5850's.
I can wait till they become available.
Thanks for the great review very impressive on those scores of the 5850.

 

[coonday]

Ball's in your court now Nvidia. Time to stop whining and bring some competition to the table.

 

[Annisman]

Hi, very very good article, It's nice to see my two 5870's at the top of every chart destroying every game out there!

I hope you guys will go into more details about how you run your benchmarks for games. When I compare my own results, sometimes I wonder if you are using ingame FRAPS results, or a benchmark tool such as Crysis to get your results, this is very important for me to know. Please dedicated a small portion of reviews to let us know exactly what part of the game you benched, and in what fashion, it will be very helpful. Also, it would be great to see exactly what settings were used in games. For example you state that you set GTA4 to the 'highest' settings, however without 2GB of Vram, the texture settings can only be set on Med. unless you are compromising in the view distance category or somewhere else. So maybe a screenshot of the settings you used should be included, I would like to see this become regular in Tom's video card reviews. Great article, and please conisder by requests.

 

[Kl2amer]

Solid review. Now we just have to wait for aftermarket coolers/designs to get them a quiter and even cooler.

 

[megamanx00]

Glad that 5850 is shorter, but I'll probably wait till Sapphire or Asus put out cards with a cooler better than the reference. Damn I want one now though .

 

[Guest]

So its a Little faster than my 4850 x2?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Another interesting article. I'm almost tempted to get a 5850. I'm just wondering how power consumption during Furmark which is a rigorous stress test compares to power consumption during gaming. Am I correct in assuming power consumption during a typical gaming session would be less? If I'm not mistaken ATI is recommending a 600 watt power supply with 40 amps on the 12 volt rail(s) for a system with two 5850's in Crossfire mode.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]annisman[/nom]Hi, very very good article, It's nice to see my two 5870's at the top of every chart destroying every game out there!I hope you guys will go into more details about how you run your benchmarks for games. When I compare my own results, sometimes I wonder if you are using ingame FRAPS results, or a benchmark tool such as Crysis to get your results, this is very important for me to know. Please dedicated a small portion of reviews to let us know exactly what part of the game you benched, and in what fashion, it will be very helpful. Also, it would be great to see exactly what settings were used in games. For example you state that you set GTA4 to the 'highest' settings, however without 2GB of Vram, the texture settings can only be set on Med. unless you are compromising in the view distance category or somewhere else. So maybe a screenshot of the settings you used should be included, I would like to see this become regular in Tom's video card reviews. Great article, and please conisder by requests.[/citation]

Usually try to include them on a page in the review. Anything more detailed you'd like, feel free to let me know and I'm happy to oblige!

 

[SchizoFrog]

It does seem that the 5850 is a great £200 card and definately the option to go for if you are buying today. I pride myself on getting good performance from great value and the test of this is to try and get my GPU to last 2 years and still be playing high end games. My current O/C 9600GT 512MB which cost me a huge £95 18 months ago, is doing just that right now. So, for a £200 DX11 GPU the 5850 is on its own and a great buy by default. However, and this is a big however! While Windows 7 will support DX11 and a few upcoming games will use a few visual effects based on DX11, nothing else does and certainly there are no true DX11 games and won't be for some time as nearly all games released these days are developed with the console market in mind. So I for one will wait. I will wait for nVidia to decide it is time to launch their DX11 GPU's. Either their GPU's will push them firmly back to the top or at least drive ATi's prices down.

 

[megamanx00]

While the 5870 didn't outplace the GTX 295 like we all expected, the 5850 sure outpaces the GTX285 and looks like it's cheaper to boot. NVidia is of course gonna cut prices on the GTX285 to compete and I'm sure the GTX275 will dip a little as well. I doubt NVidia will have a DX11 answer before the end of the year, given how they keep saying DX11 isn't too important, and even when they do I'm betting it will be more expensive for them to make than it is for ATI/AMD to make the 5850, but I suppose we'll see in the coming months.

 

[Annisman]

[citation][nom]schizofrog[/nom]It does seem that the 5850 is a great £200 card and definately the option to go for if you are buying today. I pride myself on getting good performance from great value and the test of this is to try and get my GPU to last 2 years and still be playing high end games. My current O/C 9600GT 512MB which cost me a huge £95 18 months ago, is doing just that right now. So, for a £200 DX11 GPU the 5850 is on its own and a great buy by default. However, and this is a big however! While Windows 7 will support DX11 and a few upcoming games will use a few visual effects based on DX11, nothing else does and certainly there are no true DX11 games and won't be for some time as nearly all games released these days are developed with the console market in mind. So I for one will wait. I will wait for nVidia to decide it is time to launch their DX11 GPU's. Either their GPU's will push them firmly back to the top or at least drive ATi's prices down.[/citation]


Specifically for this article, I would like to know how you benched Crysis. Did you use the in-game benchmark tool running a set number of runs, or with a FRAPS recorded sessions of say 15 minutes of gameplay ? I'd like to know, to compare specificly with my setup which is almost identical to your 5870CF setup used in this review, thanks.

 

[Annisman]

Wow I totally quoted the wrong person there, meant to quote C Angelini, not schizofrog, sorry for the confusion.

 

[1ce]

A very nice card.....now I don't know whether to get a 5870, or splurge and get two 5850s.....

 

[Why_Me]

I can't wait to see how Nvidea answers this when they come out with their DX11 line up this mid December. It's going to have to be something spectacular if it's to compete with this card.

 

[falchard]

I'm not thrilled with the current cooler. I don't think its properly doing its job. I wonder when OEMs are going to start coming out with their own coolers. Personally, I find the temps unacceptable. My current card runs 30C average, and never goes about 60C. I don't think I can accept running a card at almost 90C, or in the case the HD5870 over 100C.

 

[tacoslave]

i dont know if its just me but (o god ima get flamed so hard)i would have liked to have seen a pair of 5870's there just for the sake of comparison and because im to lazy to see the last review and this one (though they're different test beds)

 

[deathmustard]

I think i should have got a 5850 instead of a 5870. 120$ is not worth 5 fps. oh well.

 

[Honis]

I think I'll hold out on this generation for now. The performance increase isn't quiet what I expected. Good article. Thanks for helping make a decision.

For reference, I'm running a 4780 1 gig and the most "advanced" game I play is Fallout 3.

 

[urban_black_redneck]

[citation][nom]falchard[/nom]I'm not thrilled with the current cooler. I don't think its properly doing its job. I wonder when OEMs are going to start coming out with their own coolers. Personally, I find the temps unacceptable. My current card runs 30C average, and never goes about 60C. I don't think I can accept running a card at almost 90C, or in the case the HD5870 over 100C.[/citation]They are referring to crossfire setup. Dual cards usually have bad airflow between them and run hot.

Anandtech did a review and the idle/load temps for the 5850 are 42/80. I think that can be improve quiet a bit with fan adjustments.

I think it's a good idea to wait a month or two and see what the 3rd parties offer for cooling. HIS and MSI 4850s with custom coolers that have STOCK idle/load temps of ~40/~60 vs 70/85 with reference coolers.

I am not rich, and I think I plan on getting 5850 and running 1440x900 for maybe 3 years (I played at 1920 res with Far Cry 2 and didn't see enough difference to warrant the higher requirements/money). I think I want to see more DX11 games and see how the first generation of cards perform before upgrading.

 

[tacoslave]

yah im such a tard i meant a single 4870 *facepalm* rookie move...

 

[wh3resmycar]

i might skip this generation as well. seeing as theres not a single game nor test than can measure these cards dx11 mettle.

i dunno bout you people but if history serves me correct, the first batch of cards per directX generations fails miserable to run them smoothly.

 

[Desi]

[citation][nom]tacoslave[/nom]i dont know if its just me but (o god ima get flamed so hard)i would have liked to have seen a pair of 5870's there just for the sake of comparison and because im to lazy to see the last review and this one (though they're different test beds)[/citation]

Actually, for the majority of benchmarks, the same testbed was used for both reviews.
Also, CrossFire numbers ARE included for the Radeon HD 5870. Just look at the very top of each chart

 

[anamaniac]

As much as I like these cards (the 5870 I mean, as I nearly bought two and a new PSU to handle them), I think I'll wait for the Nvidia 3xx series.
They're nice and fast, but now my own hype is dieing out, and I just want to see Nvidia's new batch.

Eyeinffinity is cool though, nice to see someone brought spanview back if it wasn't going to be microsoft.
I hope DX11 has a high adoption rate... (Maybe a DX11 version of warcraft 3 also supporting resolutions over 1280x1024... man this game is getting old, but it's so awesome. Also fix warcraft 3's hosting errors...)

Great article as always Angelini.
P.S. What about the GTX 280? It's closer to the price range of the 5850 if you want a more direct comparision.