Ati 5770 VS. 4870

G

GabooN

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 14, 2004
Messages
401
I need some opinions here on what you would choose and why, the same old questions keep floating around in my head but I keep coming back to what should I buy. My specs are below and I understand that am CPU limited, 550Watt PSU.

I will list my Pros and Cons

5770 - Pros
Low Power Usage
Display Port
DX11-Longevity?

5770 - Cons
4870
Price


4870 - Pros
Performance
Price
4870 - Cons
Longevity?
 
Honestly, unless you really have to upgrade now I would say wait or try to find a nice used deal on a good card. I saw $120 for a GTX260 216 in the F/S. Almost jumped.
 
If you're playing at 1920X1080 or higher, the 4870 will be the better choice since it's memory bandwidth advantage is really shown at this res. If you're at 1680X1050, you can't go wrong with either. Since the lower res doesn't need as much memory bandwidth, you can choose based on the small things such as DX support, power consumption, card size, and such. But, with your CPU, a 5750 will give you a nice big improvement for even cheaper than the other cards. With software voltage support, you can tweak the card's speed to close the gap between it and the 4870/5770.
 
What resolution do you play at?
And what games do you play or would you like to play that your current card isn't measuring up to?
 
Not many games that I don’t play, Unreal Eng 3.x games, Source games, NFSPS, Cyrsis etc etc.
I currently game at 1280x1024 or lower out of necessity due to my video card bottleneck, would prefer to game at 1600x1200 my LCD’s native res..

With Windows 7 right around the corner and Alien VS predator using DX11 I must admit I am leaning towards the 5770.
 
HD5770>HD4870


1. These 2 are close in performance with both beating each other on certain games which is probably because of drivers maturity. Once drivers improve for HD5770 it should prove clear winner on performance.
2. HD5770 has Direct X11 shader technology which is a step in the future and will allow for improved performance on future games.
3. HD5770 benefits from 40nm TDP and will use less power and run cooler.

These 3 reasons are my main reasons to give victory to HD5770.
 
Yeah, but the extra $10 yields a substantial performance increase assuming one's PSU can supply the HD 4890 with enough juice.
 
Last gen hardwares are always going to be cheaper for the same performance.
 
I would wait a little while and get the 5770. Won't be long before you start seeing them with rebates. Find a hot deal with bing cashback and maybe the ebillme rebate and you might get it around $120 or so. I'd say about 4~6 weeks till you start seeing rebates on them

Or a blowout price on a 4890, like $140 or so
 
SonDa5 said:
$150 wtih the same deal for Ewiz's HD5770s.
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Do you not know the difference between the 5770 and 4890? I honestly think despite all your love for the 5770 you never even read a review about it. A failbus as usual sonda
 
Shadowssong said:
Do you not know the difference between the 5770 and 4890? I honestly think despite all your love for the 5770 you never even read a review about it. A failbus as usual sonda
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I go by word of mouth from friends and personal experience. The reviews are helpful.
When a card has been out for awhile I like to use the ORB futuremark data base and the HWBOT data base.

I owned a HD4890 before and got turned onto the HD4770s. HD4890 is a great card. The prices on them are very nice right now as well. 2 HD4770s in Xfire is still better than single HD4890 though.

With HD5770 you are paying for low power TDP of 40nm in HD5770 and all the other associate technology. It's modern and new vs. old muscle. Both have something to offer.
I'd still take the HD5770 for under $150.
 
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A process technology shrink is never described as TDP, but getting that corrected is as likely as getting you to quit posting about 4770s. :rolleyes:
 
SonDa5 said:
I often forget that not everybody is familiar with computer terminology.

TDP = Thermal Design Power or Thermal Dissipation Power.

Read up on TDP here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power
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what does this have to do with a die shrink? TDP means eqivalent heat outputed, not much else.

It just tells you what kind of cooler do you need.

The TDP listings for graphics cards on Wikipedia's site are jokes, as they are not actual TDP, but rather, board power consumption, which:

Some lost in V regulators
Some lost into the memory
Some lost into the cooling system
Some lost just because
Then finally, the GPU

So a 'die shrink' != TDP
 
I'd wait a bit if you can. They are both pretty similar in price and performance, although a used 4870 can be a great deal if you find one for the right price.

The reason I'd wait is that both cards are very quick RIGHT NOW. The 4870 was a high end card when it came out, however there haven't really been any games that have stepped it up a notch since then. Once the next generation of games start rolling in I think we'll find that the 4870 will be mid-low range and you'll be turning settings down. Same will happen to the 5770, so even though it's got DX11, will you actually be able to use it in next gen games?
 
5770, no questions asked..4870 is nice and all but the heat and power consumption is just too much compared to a 5770.
 
Unless you have a limit on power, I would go with the 4890. The 5770 has it's place, for example my cousin has a small shuttle currently running a 9800GT and the power supply is quite limited (250watts) once card vendors start coming out with sinlge slot 5770's I plan to upgrade him. He'll get nearly 2x the performance while maintaining the same if not slighly less power consumption (load)

But short of being in a similar circumstance, there are better options for the money IMO. I mean seriously, when has power consumption been much of a factor in a desktop environment? Not since these cards came out and the AMD/ATI fans started using that at every turn. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly a nice thing to have, but it should be a secondary or tertiary concern or the "tie breaker" between two cards where are close to identical in the stuff that really matters. I don't recall people saying "oh, you know those 4870's/4890's, they just consume way too much power and produce way too much heat for my blood" prior to the 5xxx series.

For me, performance as well as reasonable price is the primary concern and IMO the 4890 wins when put up against a 4870 or 5770.
 
Armatoste said:
One thing to be noted is that the HD 5770 can overclock much higher than the HD 4870. Both in core and memory.
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The higher OC on the memory is negated by the 128-bit bus. Even with a higher OC, the memory bandwidth is still less than that of a 4870. Low power consumption has its place, especially for us SFF users who are limited to matx power supplies.
 
GabooN said:
Not many games that I don’t play, Unreal Eng 3.x games, Source games, NFSPS, Cyrsis etc etc.
I currently game at 1280x1024 or lower out of necessity due to my video card bottleneck, would prefer to game at 1600x1200 my LCD’s native res..

With Windows 7 right around the corner and Alien VS predator using DX11 I must admit I am leaning towards the 5770.
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This bolded part is why you should wait for the 5850 to sink to an attainable price point. It's the best value in the 5000 line and miles ahead of the 5770. The 5770 is not worth its price at this time, and if you really are getting it for some anticipated future gains, waiting for reduced price is always the best way to go.
 
Soggy Popcorn gives pretty good advice in my opinion, and I'm currently waiting to see at least some deals on the 5850's later in the year. Currently thoug, the price difference is pretty large, and it's understandable to me if some people don't want to save up the exta cash just for a graphic card.

If you're buying to future proof though, and with the concept of using dx11 in future games in mind, I would definitely save up and spring for a 5850; or a 5830 or other "in-between" card whenever it comes out.

I would choose the 5770 over the 4870 especially at 1600x1200 res, performance is nearly on par and the 5770 will use a lot less power; but I guess you can be the only one to decide how important that is to you.

The 4890 can be had with some decent deals though, and if you really don't want to spring for a 5850 the 4890 would offer the best performance as a single card in future games.

Be careful who you listen too, while I think both the x770's are nice cards I'm starting to wonder if SonDa has a gold wedding band soldered to his gpu's heatsink yet.
 
Why would you recommend a 5850 considering his cpu. Doubt there would be much difference between a 4870/5770 to a 5850 unless he was planning on updating his system. I would spend cheap if you aren't planning on updating the rest of your hardware, otherwise go with a hd5xxx series if there is a chance you will be in the near future.
 
I would really consider getting the 5770. It's dx11 plus it has low power consumption. As far as performance goes, though, you'll be getting a card with a little less performance for $60 more. I would get the 5770 so in the future the thought of having 3 monitors working together to form one picture for eyefinity is amazing. The 4870 is cheaper, yes, but with its power consumption, you probably couldn't run crossfire on that PSU, whereas you probably could with two 5770s.
 
Aaron11 said:
I would really consider getting the 5770. It's dx11 plus it has low power consumption. As far as performance goes, though, you'll be getting a card with a little less performance for $60 more. I would get the 5770 so in the future the thought of having 3 monitors working together to form one picture for eyefinity is amazing. The 4870 is cheaper, yes, but with its power consumption, you probably couldn't run crossfire on that PSU, whereas you probably could with two 5770s.
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5770 most likely won't have enough juice to run DX11 at a minimum of 3840x1024. I know that 5850 doesn't have enough to run Crysis at 3840x1200 all enthusiast/no AA.
 
Thanks for all the input I apprecaite it.

Unless my mobo or cpu dies I wont be building a new PC for at least a year, with that said I have had the 7900GTX since 2006 its been showing its age and now is the time for an upgrade. I dont see the need at this point to puchase anything greater then a 4870 or 5770 only becuase the rest of my PC is the bottleneck and with waiting at least a year there is no reason to spend the money now. The next game that I am truly excited for is AvP and I am sure that the 5770/my PC will run the game decent at 1280x1024 or higher..
 
Soggy_Popcorn said:
This bolded part is why you should wait for the 5850 to sink to an attainable price point. It's the best value in the 5000 line and miles ahead of the 5770. The 5770 is not worth its price at this time, and if you really are getting it for some anticipated future gains, waiting for reduced price is always the best way to go.
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Correct. There may even be a 5800 or 5830 out by that time and as long as it has the 256-bit bus, it'll have the bandwidth necessary to put out the performance the 5770 should have but doesn't because it is limited by the 128-bit shortbus. This will also future-proof you much better than spending the money now for an over-priced 5770 and then in six months when that game comes out and you want to buy a nice higher res display to enjoy it on, your 5770 would be choking trying to push the frames through that restrictive bus.
 
Tbird87 said:
Why would you recommend a 5850 considering his cpu. Doubt there would be much difference between a 4870/5770 to a 5850 unless he was planning on updating his system. I would spend cheap if you aren't planning on updating the rest of your hardware, otherwise go with a hd5xxx series if there is a chance you will be in the near future.
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5850 gets me excited :D.

Nah, it was early when I posted and I didn't even think about his processor :rolleyes:
I would still expect there to be a noticeable difference though, but then I'm not an expert or anything when it comes to cpu/gpu scaling honestly; and now I'd just be interested to see how much if any of a difference there would be between a 4870/5770 and a 5850 on that setup.
 
I just picked up a used 4870 in the FS section for $100 shipped and he had a 2nd one that he let go for $90 shipped. For that price, you might as well grab one of those until you build your new computer.
 
Fading Phoenix said:
5850 gets me excited :D.

Nah, it was early when I posted and I didn't even think about his processor :rolleyes:
I would still expect there to be a noticeable difference though, but then I'm not an expert or anything when it comes to cpu/gpu scaling honestly; and now I'd just be interested to see how much if any of a difference there would be between a 4870/5770 and a 5850 on that setup.
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With his CPU, the 5770 and 5850 would perform identical with most games at max with 4XAA or less. If he bumped AA to 8X, then the 5770 would start to buckle with the increased memory demand, while the 5850 would keep the same frame rates. I know how the Athlon 64s can hold back performance on modern cards. I had a 3800X2 at 2.9, and when I upgraded from a 8800GT to a GTX 260, the frame rates were exactly the same until I would use very high AA, mainly 8Q and higher.
 
I decided to go with the Sapphire 5770 from eWize.com, for $148.00 wasn’t a bad deal since it comes with Dirt2, I will post results and if the purchase was worth it or not.
 
At those prices, that's a very reasonable card. At the $159 launch price, not so much.
 
SonDa5 said:
I go by word of mouth from friends and personal experience. The reviews are helpful.
When a card has been out for awhile I like to use the ORB futuremark data base and the HWBOT data base.

I owned a HD4890 before and got turned onto the HD4770s. HD4890 is a great card. The prices on them are very nice right now as well. 2 HD4770s in Xfire is still better than single HD4890 though.

With HD5770 you are paying for low power TDP of 40nm in HD5770 and all the other associate technology. It's modern and new vs. old muscle. Both have something to offer.
I'd still take the HD5770 for under $150.
Click to expand...


I stopped reading after I read friends.
 
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