6850 CF vs 5850 CF BF3

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SupraSaiyan

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Apr 11, 2008
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Which of the two is the better setup for BF3? I can get them both for same price. Bf3 at 1920x1200

Thanks
 
HD 6850 crossfire. Better performance and as master noran said, runs cooler and uses less power.

I think a single HD 5850 beats a single HD 6850 but in crossfire the 6 series is seriously miles ahead.
 
Just to make things worse, I also found 2xgtx295 for same price as 2x6850 and 2x5850... Are 2xGTX295 better than 2x6850 for bf3?
 
SupraSaiyan said:
Just to make things worse, I also found 2xgtx295 for same price as 2x6850 and 2x5850... Are 2xGTX295 better than 2x6850 for bf3?
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6850. 1gb memory is important I would say and they perform more consistent and I believe better, not sure though. The GTX295 quad sli sucked I think, or it performed very randomly(shitty in one game good in others) while the 6850s are more consistent.
 
6850 crosscuts plays bf3 Max settings. Without msaa. Which I can't even tell the sufferance between. @ 1080p btw. Reccomend them. They are right at 60fps. Perfect.
 
xIronCrossx said:
HD 6850 crossfire. Better performance and as master noran said, runs cooler and uses less power.

I think a single HD 5850 beats a single HD 6850 but in crossfire the 6 series is seriously miles ahead.
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This is not true. I have two PC's, one with dual 5850's and one with dual 6850's. The 6850's are slightly faster than the 5850's out of the box mostly due to the much higher core clock speed 725MHz vs 900MHz. However when the 5850's are overclocked to 800MHz, they easily overtake the 6850's due to having more shaders. When overclocked to 850Mhz, they are a good bit faster than the 6850's even when the 6850's are overlocked to 950Mhz.

In a nutshell, out of the box, no overlocking, the 6850's are slightly faster, in DX11 games with a lot of tesselation, the improvements are little more noticeable since the 6xxx series has better tesselation performance. Otherwise with a little overclocking the 5850's can be made to really blow past a pair of 6850's even overclocked.

That being said, the 6850's are slightly less power hungry, and I do mean slightly. The 6xxx crossfire scaling improvements over the 5xxx series is a little blown out of proportion because I'm just not seeing that in my setups.
 
Blkout said:
This is not true. I have two PC's, one with dual 5850's and one with dual 6850's. The 6850's are slightly faster than the 5850's out of the box mostly due to the much higher core clock speed 725MHz vs 900MHz. However when the 5850's are overclocked to 800MHz, they easily overtake the 6850's due to having more shaders. When overclocked to 850Mhz, they are a good bit faster than the 6850's even when the 6850's are overlocked to 950Mhz.

In a nutshell, out of the box, no overlocking, the 6850's are slightly faster, in DX11 games with a lot of tesselation, the improvements are little more noticeable since the 6xxx series has better tesselation performance. Otherwise with a little overclocking the 5850's can be made to really blow past a pair of 6850's even overclocked.

That being said, the 6850's are slightly less power hungry, and I do mean slightly. The 6xxx crossfire scaling improvements over the 5xxx series is a little blown out of proportion because I'm just not seeing that in my setups.
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Thank you. I was just looking at that same performance earlier, and the 6850's even with their higher clocks aren't way faster than 5850's. Just slightly I'd say, and that even really depends on the game played.
 
OmegaSupreme said:
Thank you. I was just looking at that same performance earlier, and the 6850's even with their higher clocks aren't way faster than 5850's. Just slightly I'd say, and that even really depends on the game played.
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Correct, in DX9 games the 5850 and 6850 are very close at stock clocks with the 6850 haveing a very small advantage. In DX11 games with tessellation, the 6850 shows a greater speed advantage because of the improved tessellation hardware but that being said, in most all games DX9, DX10 or DX11, a 5850 can still be a little quicker than a 6850 if overclocked above 850MHz which is pretty safe on most 5850's with just a slight bump in voltage. These cards are very close in performance and to be honest, neither card is more than a few frames per second apart in most games, with the 5850 having a slight advantage when overclocked. The 6850 can be overclocked also but because their clock speeds are already so high, there's not much left in them to overclock.
 
xBanzai89 said:
Looks even according to this. I was expecting the 5850 to pull ahead. Kinda shocked.
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I've explained this, the 5850 and 6850 are almost identical out of the box because the 5850 has more shaders but the 6850 has a higher core clock. When you overclock the 5850 to 800-850MHz core speed, it starts to pull away from the 6850 in all but the most demanding DX11 games with heavy tessellation. You have to remember that the 5850 stock core clocks are very low because ATI wanted to put more distance between the 5850 and the flagship 5870 since the shader difference between the two cards wasn't that big. However, the 5850's overclock very well and it was quite easy to overclock them to 5870 speeds or higher and have them running faster than a 5870 or in this case a 6870 and probably a 6950 in some cases. The 5850 was the best bang for the buck of the last generation of cards and it was such a good value that its still a very relative card in this generation as well, easily one of the best cards you could buy in the last two years.
 
Just google 6850 CF issues first before you buy them
Forget about clock speeds and that crap just look at one thing

ATI 5850
Processing power (single precision): 2.09 TeraFLOPS

ATI 6850
1.5 TeraFLOPS

gpu-perf-2.png
 
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Spooony said:
Just google 6850 CF issues first before you buy them
Forget about clock speeds and that crap just look at one thing

ATI 5850
Processing power (single precision): 2.09 TeraFLOPS

ATI 6850
1.5 TeraFLOPS

gpu-perf-2.png
Click to expand...

Which tells you very little in regards to gaming performance because as I stated before, the extra shaders of the 5850 make it practically identical to the 6850 with a much higher core clock so your teraflop theory doesn't really hold water here. Both cards are very similar in performance within a few frames in most games. The 6850 has a slightly advantage in DX11 games with tessellation is used, and the 5850 has a slight advantage when overclocked in DX9 and DX10 games.
 
Blkout said:
This is not true. I have two PC's, one with dual 5850's and one with dual 6850's. The 6850's are slightly faster than the 5850's out of the box mostly due to the much higher core clock speed 725MHz vs 900MHz. However when the 5850's are overclocked to 800MHz, they easily overtake the 6850's due to having more shaders. When overclocked to 850Mhz, they are a good bit faster than the 6850's even when the 6850's are overlocked to 950Mhz.

In a nutshell, out of the box, no overlocking, the 6850's are slightly faster, in DX11 games with a lot of tesselation, the improvements are little more noticeable since the 6xxx series has better tesselation performance. Otherwise with a little overclocking the 5850's can be made to really blow past a pair of 6850's even overclocked.

That being said, the 6850's are slightly less power hungry, and I do mean slightly. The 6xxx crossfire scaling improvements over the 5xxx series is a little blown out of proportion because I'm just not seeing that in my setups.
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What 6850 comes clock in at 900mhz please let me and everyone else know.
 
900Mhz? I think he is refering to 6870. The 5850 outperforms the 6850 by almost 20% in BF3 and only a hair slower than the 6870

amd%20high%201920.png


And yes overclocked to the same clocks a 5850 will also outperform a 6870 obviously.

BF3_1920_HQ.png
 
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Macross said:
What 6850 comes clock in at 900mhz please let me and everyone else know.
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My mistake, I meant 6870. I must have missed that. Now I need to edit all of my posts. Ugh.

The 5850 and 6870 are almost identical out of the box, the 5850 is considerably faster than a 6850. Sorry for any confusion peeps.

I have a dual 5850 crossfire setup and a dual 6870 crossfire setup. :eek:
 
IAMEVIL said:
900Mhz? I think he is refering to 6870. The 5850 outperforms the 6850 by almost 20% in BF3 and only a hair slower than the 6870

amd%20high%201920.png


And yes overclocked to the same clocks a 5850 will also outperform a 6870 obviously.

BF3_1920_HQ.png
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You are correct, I meant 6870 but you don't need to overclock a 5850 to the same clocks to be faster than a 6870, 850MHz core clock is enough, I think even 800Mhz is enough in DX9 and DX10 games if I remember correctly. Its been a few months since I last benched my two rigs.
 
I just came from a 5850 to a 6870 and both overclocked, I found the 6870 to be smoother, that was metro2033 and BF3. ive just added a second 6870 and now can max everything out...one thing to remember is the 6 series scales better in Crossfire than the 5 series does
 
xIronCrossx said:
HD 6850 crossfire. Better performance and as master noran said, runs cooler and uses less power.

I think a single HD 5850 beats a single HD 6850 but in crossfire the 6 series is seriously miles ahead.
Click to expand...

The 5850 is way faster than a 6850, but I never realized how the 6 series pulled ahead in crossfire.
 
I just installed 2 XFX 6870 2gb cards for 370$ AR ,both with lifetime warrenties.

Much faster than both the 6850 and 5850 in crossfire and 2gb of memory EACH too..
 
psyclist said:
I just came from a 5850 to a 6870 and both overclocked, I found the 6870 to be smoother, that was metro2033 and BF3. ive just added a second 6870 and now can max everything out...one thing to remember is the 6 series scales better in Crossfire than the 5 series does
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The 6xxx series is slightly faster than the 5xxx series when using DX11 games because of tessellation, in DX9 and DX10 games they are preactically identical at stock clocks. As for the 6xxx scaling compared to 5xxx scaling, that's a load of horse manure. They both scale about the same.
 
Blkout said:
The 6xxx series is slightly faster than the 5xxx series when using DX11 games because of tessellation, in DX9 and DX10 games they are preactically identical at stock clocks. As for the 6xxx scaling compared to 5xxx scaling, that's a load of horse manure. They both scale about the same.
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Yup. Its all down to drivers which can make or break CF scaling. If there is any innovation in hardware architecture that directly improves scaling AMD will be all over it in their 6000 series marketing presentations. And I can never understand the logic of going 6850 over 5850 just because they scale better in CF but slower in single card operation. When CF doesnt work, isn't the faster single card more beneficial?
 
IAMEVIL said:
Yup. Its all down to drivers which can make or break CF scaling. If there is any innovation in hardware architecture that directly improves scaling AMD will be all over it in their 6000 series marketing presentations. And I can never understand the logic of going 6850 over 5850 just because they scale better in CF but slower in single card operation. When CF doesnt work, isn't the faster single card more beneficial?
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The crossfire scaling in the 6xxx series over the 5xxx series is marginally better and I do mean marginally, its certainly not worth talking about. Some people act like its night and day difference and this just isn't the case. A 5850 and 6870 are almost identical in performance even in crossfire so the scaling there isn't even worth mentioning. However, the 6xxx series has slightly better DX11 tessellation performance due to the architecure change and I would estimate its about a 10% difference.
 
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