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5850CF vs 5970

M

maliclipse

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Messages
101
I know this may have been beat to death but I recently ordered a 5970 retail box for about 600$ after BCB. Now I see a deal for 5850s for about 229 after BCB. 460 vs 600. I've looked at benchmarks and the 5850 CF is pretty much on par with the 5970. I haven't recieved the 5970 yet and am thinking of selling it on ebay for 650. Hell, at 229 I could get 3 of them and do a tri-fi

Thoughts?
 
Well they are similar performance but for two totally separate reasons.

The 5970 uses full 5870 GPUs with 1600 stream processors each but clocks them down to save on power.

The 5850 only has 1440 stream processors.

You can always overclock to overcome the lower clockspeed on the 5970 but there is nothing you can do about having less stream processors other than hoping for an absolutely exceptional overclock to make up the difference.
 
The 5850s will hit higher over clock speeds esp with the new bios.

Your also spreading the heat over two boards so it should be easier to cool. OF course you can allways buy a second 5970

Personaly the 5870 crossfired would be the best performance.

All these cards will most likely be held back thanks to its 1gig frame buffer
 
Yep I thought about that... I also thought that down the road I could also add another card and do a quad fire. I don't know how long that deal will last but its very temping to save about 200$
 
pasta4u said:
The 5850s will hit higher over clock speeds esp with the new bios.

Your also spreading the heat over two boards so it should be easier to cool. OF course you can allways buy a second 5970

Personaly the 5870 crossfired would be the best performance.

All these cards will most likely be held back thanks to its 1gig frame buffer
Click to expand...

What new bios?
 
Um well the 5970 is 2 lots of 5870 hardware but downclocked (725/1000), if you overvolt you can get the GPUs to at least 5870 speeds again (850/1200) without a problem, basically the components are rated for these speeds so with a small voltage bump using something like MSI's afterburner which allows custom voltage control, you're good to go.

But most people can push the overclock on the hardware at least as far as a respectable 5870 overclock so we're talking 1Ghz+ on the GPU and 1250+ on the memory. Heat generally isn't a problem, the cooler is rated for 400W thermal output and the card at stock only draws 295Watts of electrical power so there is a large overhead for cooling (this was done deliberately)

I don't know much about the 5850 hardware but I'd be surprised if people are hitting the same kind of OC's that a 5970 can get especially when applying custom voltages way above stock, do the 5850s have voltage regulators on them?
 
Yeah 5850s have regs. There are two reasons why Cypress chips are binned as 5850s rather than 5870s: Either they can't hit the required clockspeeds for 5870 performance, or part of the shader silicon is broken. If A, then they won't overclock like 5870s will, if B then they might overclock like muthafukkas. Only way to find out is try. And TBH I haven't even pushed mine yet, performance is sublime.
 
Oh yeah, 5850's are just binned 5870s...well in that case it's basically hit/miss if you get one that can overclock to 5870 speeds and beyond, and if you're getting 2 for crossfire you double chance of getting a "bad" card, both cards need the same clock speeds.

I know the 5970 cores were cherry picked but the other way around, they were the best of the Cypress cores specifically for clock per voltage, i think the top end 5970 overclocks are pretty damn fast, I've not pushed mine past 900/1200 yet, no real point at the moment. pretty much all of the release date reviews stuck to the precanned voltages of the default ATI OverVolt tool so the real overclocking potential of these cards was MASSIVELY understated, which was a shame because a lot couldn't hit 5870 speeds but will happily do them speeds with more voltage.
 
Just got me a second 5850, I couldn't resist, at 244 it's quite a bargain for the time being. Sadly, I realized after I bought it that my motherboard only supports 16x4 crossfire. SO .. does anyone know how much that kind of setup will hurt performance?
 
pasta4u said:
you can search for it , its a bios that lets overclocking tools other than amd over drive to work
Click to expand...

So your referring to the Asus / MSI bios that allows voltage tweaking and third-party over-clocking tools to work? If anyone is looking for these bios versions you can find them at techPowerUp
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Oh yeah, 5850's are just binned 5870s...well in that case it's basically hit/miss if you get one that can overclock to 5870 speeds and beyond, and if you're getting 2 for crossfire you double chance of getting a "bad" card, both cards need the same clock speeds.

I know the 5970 cores were cherry picked but the other way around, they were the best of the Cypress cores specifically for clock per voltage, i think the top end 5970 overclocks are pretty damn fast, I've not pushed mine past 900/1200 yet, no real point at the moment. pretty much all of the release date reviews stuck to the precanned voltages of the default ATI OverVolt tool so the real overclocking potential of these cards was MASSIVELY understated, which was a shame because a lot couldn't hit 5870 speeds but will happily do them speeds with more voltage.
Click to expand...

I've taken a 5970 to 1000/1100. *eg* 850/1200 is a breeze. I just wish I didn't have the annoying 2d flicker problem on multi monitors. That's the only thing holding back my enjoyment at the moment.
 
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