Bf3: [email protected] ati 5850

ematsui

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 2, 2004
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Gaming at 1080p Settings all high, Both AA off, AO off

Game was running great on metro but jumping into caspian was showing the true age of my card. With Fps around 50s with dips in the 30s and spikes to 60s.

Is it worth upgrading to a 6970 or 570?
 
BF3 Beta 1080p Ultra detail performance

HD5850: 30fps average, 22fps minimum
HD5850 (AA/AO off) (estimated): 52fps average, 38fps minimum

HD6970: 44fps average, 32fps minimum
AA/AO off estimate: 75fps average, 55fps minimum

GTX570: 46fps average, 31fps minimum
AA/AO off estimate: 79fps average, 53fps minimum


CPU limitation (Q9550 @ 3.9Ghz): 105fps average, 74fps minimum

Source: Direct clock extrapolation, GameGPU.ru

There are some gains to be had, but for the best experience you may be better off either going crossfire (ideally with 2GB cards), or waiting for the HD7 series - you may be waiting a fair while though.
 
Gaming at 1080p Settings all high, Both AA off, AO off

Game was running great on metro but jumping into caspian was showing the true age of my card. With Fps around 50s with dips in the 30s and spikes to 60s.

Is it worth upgrading to a 6970 or 570?

Just overclock it. I am running all high settings except terrain/ shadows/ post AA medium at 1680x1050. With my 5850 at 985/1290, it almost never drops below 70fps
 
I over bought months back when the reference 6950's were in stock. Got a great deal on the two shader unlocked units sitting in my system right now after MIR. Anyway... I play all my games on a single 25.5 ASUS 1920x1200 with the in game settings maxxed out. So far a single 6950 has been able to deliver in every game I play. Been playing the BF3 BETA and rates are stable. Rates are still stable even if I trim my system down to one card by disabling xfire. I use vsync so it's pretty much 60fps all the time. Knowing that the BETA is using dumbed down settings I'm going to wait for the release. If a single 6950 does the trick one of my 6950's is hitting the FS thread. TBH I'll prolly turn a net profit if I do. :D

All that said my recommendation is this... Hold off until the release. If after release you find the rates your setup is delivering is not tolerable.. upgrade time. If you can live with it hold off and wait till the 7xxx series hist the streets then upgrade as the prices of the 6xxx series should drop appreciably.

My2c.
 
Hold off, your performance isn't bad right now. You're at the point where you can probably bump your performance up to where you'd be satisfied by doing some more tweaking. The performance bump you'd get ain't worth what it would cost you.

I was still on my 4850 as of a couple months ago. Made a much bigger jump than you'd be making to a 6970 and honestly I wish I'd have stuck it out til 7x.
 
thanks for the input

my 5850 is at 875/1130 oclocked to the max for it right now.. its a workhorse and has served me well the past 2 years..

I think im gonna hold off for the 7 series cards.
 
I over bought months back when the reference 6950's were in stock. Got a great deal on the two shader unlocked units sitting in my system right now after MIR. Anyway... I play all my games on a single 25.5 ASUS 1920x1200 with the in game settings maxxed out. So far a single 6950 has been able to deliver in every game I play. Been playing the BF3 BETA and rates are stable. Rates are still stable even if I trim my system down to one card by disabling xfire. I use vsync so it's pretty much 60fps all the time. Knowing that the BETA is using dumbed down settings I'm going to wait for the release. If a single 6950 does the trick one of my 6950's is hitting the FS thread. TBH I'll prolly turn a net profit if I do. :D

All that said my recommendation is this... Hold off until the release. If after release you find the rates your setup is delivering is not tolerable.. upgrade time. If you can live with it hold off and wait till the 7xxx series hist the streets then upgrade as the prices of the 6xxx series should drop appreciably.

My2c.

Depends on the settings. Two HD6950s do fairly well in the game at 1920x1200, maybe a minimum of about 60fps exactly in Paris Metro, perhaps 50 or a bit less in Caspian Border with lots of players. One HD6950 though, you must be very tolerant of low frame rates if every setting is maxed. 35fps or so is pretty unpleasant for many.
 
Q9400 @ 3.5, 5850 @ 950/1200.

Caspian Border. 1080p. Terrain/Model ULTRA, Textures/Shadows HIGH. MSAA OFF. MLAA medium. HBAO OFF.

Avg 55 fps, Min 30 fps.

Very playable and fluid. The 5850 is a beastly card with an OC. If a gtx480 is ~10% faster than the 5870, a 5850 at 1ghz is ~= or slightly faster than gtx480. That puts it ~= gtx570.
 
Depends on the settings. Two HD6950s do fairly well in the game at 1920x1200, maybe a minimum of about 60fps exactly in Paris Metro, perhaps 50 or a bit less in Caspian Border with lots of players. One HD6950 though, you must be very tolerant of low frame rates if every setting is maxed. 35fps or so is pretty unpleasant for many.

I think a single card is able to keep playable rates ATM because the graphics are "dumbed" down somewhat in the BETA. We'll see if it still remains true after release and a new set of drivers. As is a single unlocked 6950 keeps rates at 60fps or above with everything maxed just fine. Just logged off a full Caspian server with a single card.. no issues FRAPS reporting about 65~70fps average.
 
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Are you guys getting 100% GPU utilization? My HD 5850 seems to be running fine on High setting with acceptable FPS between 47 and 68 FPS at 1920x1080 but I see the GPU at 100% pretty odd.

The GPU temps will not go over 69c degrees.
 
Are you guys getting 100% GPU utilization? My HD 5850 seems to be running fine on High setting with acceptable FPS between 47 and 68 FPS at 1920x1080 but I see the GPU at 100% pretty odd.

The GPU temps will not go over 69c degrees.

I'll fire up GPUZ later tonight and let you know. I would not be at all surprised to see 100% utilization though.
 
Q9400 @ 3.5, 5850 @ 950/1200.

Caspian Border. 1080p. Terrain/Model ULTRA, Textures/Shadows HIGH. MSAA OFF. MLAA medium. HBAO OFF.

Avg 55 fps, Min 30 fps.

Very playable and fluid. The 5850 is a beastly card with an OC. If a gtx480 is ~10% faster than the 5870, a 5850 at 1ghz is ~= or slightly faster than gtx480. That puts it ~= gtx570.

lol, you're reaching there. There's no way a 5850 with ANY OC matches a stock 570 in tesselated DX11 titles like BF3.
 
The GTX570 is typically about 25% faster than the HD5850 - it's not inconceivable that an overclock would get close to that sort of a gain. If performance scaled linearly with overclocking (which of course it doesn't), you'd see a 31% gain on an HD5850 at that clock speed - I'm not going to be so quick to dismiss the claim that his 5850 hangs quite well with a 570. Tesselation obviously is where the 5800s fall down, but outside an nvidia-developed title like HAWX 2 I'm not sure I've really seen this take effect in real world gameplay.
 
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