Is a 5770 a good test of a switch to ATI?

InvisiBill

InvisiBill

2[H]4U
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Jan 2, 2003
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I'm wanting to switch to a 5870, but I've had Nvidia for a while (that's just what happened to be the right value at the times I was shopping). I want to physically try a card in my system before I commit to it. However, there aren't any 5870s in stock locally.

Do you think that swapping a 5770 in would be a good test of whether or not I'll have issues with ATI (drivers or whatever)? I don't necessarily expect it to be as fast as my current GTX285 even, but I'm hoping it'll be a decent test of whether or not a 5870 would cause problems in my system.

Any thoughts?
 
Just get something from a retailer that has good exchange/return policy if you happen to have issues.
Following that rationale, there's no point going with a 'lower' model as a trial. Just get what you want. If it works good keep it, if it doesn't play nice with your system you'll know pretty soon.
 
Morphy said:
Just get something from a retailer that has good exchange/return policy if you happen to have issues.
Following that rationale, there's no point going with a 'lower' model as a trial. Just get what you want. If it works good keep it, if it doesn't play nice with your system you'll know pretty soon.
Click to expand...

Go straight to the 5850, 5870, or 5970. Testing a lower end card doesn't make sense. Driver issues between both companies have been all but eliminated. Occasionally you'll run into a hiccup in a driver, or tragically, a driver that blows up you card (one of Nvidia's recent ones), but overall both companies have decent drivers.

There are many fanboys that tout driver issues in the opposing brand because it help aid their irrational choice of remaining loyal to one brand.

I'm not saying that you'll never run into a driver issue, but you are just as likely to do so from either company's driver set. I went from 8800GT SLI'ed to 4870x2 and have been very satisfied with both companies overall
 
your always going to find some issues somewhere. I got rid of my GTX285 because Nvidia refused to address a long known bug, others have had issues with ATI cards . (as peeved about it as I am I still can't say any company has the upper hand here though Nvidia does tend to have support for the latest and greatest sooner then ATI, though they lag elsewhere. pick your poison here)

as for is the 5770 being a good card, well its in my opinion a kick ass card. a LOT of bang for the buck. I highly recommend it for people that it will work for.

I would not try a low end card first, find someone with a good return policy (I love tiger direct) and just bite the bullet. If it cause you grief send it back. I highly recommend the 5850 for the best bang for the buck (didn't stop me from getting a 5870 though) and just OC it.
 
If you go with a 5850 or 5870, it's best to make sure it's using the reference design. The new designs are more cost effective for the AIB partners, but mainly becasue they use cheaper parts that severely limit overclocking potential.
 
noquarter said:
What...? CF 5770s are faster/equal to a 5870 in 90% of games.. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5770-hd5750-crossfirex_7.html#sect1
Click to expand...

why would you buy 2 cards . Your done with upgrades you'd have to ditch both cards.

Buying a single 5870 will get you the same performance adn no problem with crossfire scaling and you can add a second one when your ready.


Thats why im going with a 5850. $280 and later when they are cheaper i can snag a second and hae a muchbetter experiance than 5770cf
 
pasta4u said:
why would you buy 2 cards . Your done with upgrades you'd have to ditch both cards.

Buying a single 5870 will get you the same performance adn no problem with crossfire scaling and you can add a second one when your ready.


Thats why im going with a 5850. $280 and later when they are cheaper i can snag a second and hae a muchbetter experiance than 5770cf
Click to expand...

Yea I agree with what you're saying I was just disagreeing with the benchmarking. It's much better to go with a single 5870 if you can, for single gpu performance and adding a 2nd later. But the 5770 CF does bench well.
 
noquarter said:
What...? CF 5770s are faster/equal to a 5870 in 90% of games.. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5770-hd5750-crossfirex_7.html#sect1
Click to expand...

Guru3D shows different results with 5770 CF.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5770-review-test/23

5770cf.jpg
 
Thanks for all the input. This may have just been subconscious fishing for support of what I really want to do, but I do consider all the points.

I'm thinking I'll probably still pick up the 5770 for testing. The only thing it'll cost me is the gas to get to the store. I'm definitely not your standard user, so I really want to test this out with no obligation before fully committing.

  • I'm on XP x64. I have a key for Win7, but I just hate the interface and some of the decisions that have been made for underlying things. I'm sure I'll eventually make the jump, but I'm forcing myself to use Win7 on my work laptop and I'm constantly yelling at it for not doing what I want it to.
  • I'll keep my 9800GT installed for PhysX and CUDA. I know a lot of people are now using ATI and Nvidia together (with the driver hack), but the 9800GT (with its huge cooler) plus my extra soundcard make a second CF card a bigger deal than it would be in a system with no other cards.
  • My GPUs are loaded to 100% 24x7. See this thread for a hint. The few benchmarks I've seen for the HD5000 cards show some pretty large variations. The 5770 is showing as about 35% faster than my GTX285. Two of those in CF would come out to about 2.5-3x as fast as the GTX285. However, the 5870 is showing over 4x as fast as the GTX285. But the listed 5750 is showing as 70% faster than the 5770, even though it's got fewer, slower shaders.

I think actually getting my hands on a card for testing will allow me to get a better idea for the performance I'll get in my setup. Hopefully there's nothing too crazily different between the 5770 and 5870 (deep within the drivers and/or hardware) and the former will be a decent test of how the latter will behave for me. I'm hoping that everything goes great and I'll be ordering a 5870 in a few days, but I'm expecting the worst and fully covering myself.

Remember, if you expect the worst, it can only get better. =)
 
InvisiBill said:
Thanks for all the input. This may have just been subconscious fishing for support of what I really want to do, but I do consider all the points.

I'm thinking I'll probably still pick up the 5770 for testing. The only thing it'll cost me is the gas to get to the store. I'm definitely not your standard user, so I really want to test this out with no obligation before fully committing.

  • I'm on XP x64. I have a key for Win7, but I just hate the interface and some of the decisions that have been made for underlying things. I'm sure I'll eventually make the jump, but I'm forcing myself to use Win7 on my work laptop and I'm constantly yelling at it for not doing what I want it to.
  • I'll keep my 9800GT installed for PhysX and CUDA. I know a lot of people are now using ATI and Nvidia together (with the driver hack), but the 9800GT (with its huge cooler) plus my extra soundcard make a second CF card a bigger deal than it would be in a system with no other cards.
  • My GPUs are loaded to 100% 24x7. See this thread for a hint. The few benchmarks I've seen for the HD5000 cards show some pretty large variations. The 5770 is showing as about 35% faster than my GTX285. Two of those in CF would come out to about 2.5-3x as fast as the GTX285. However, the 5870 is showing over 4x as fast as the GTX285. But the listed 5750 is showing as 70% faster than the 5770, even though it's got fewer, slower shaders.

I think actually getting my hands on a card for testing will allow me to get a better idea for the performance I'll get in my setup. Hopefully there's nothing too crazily different between the 5770 and 5870 (deep within the drivers and/or hardware) and the former will be a decent test of how the latter will behave for me. I'm hoping that everything goes great and I'll be ordering a 5870 in a few days, but I'm expecting the worst and fully covering myself.

Remember, if you expect the worst, it can only get better. =)
Click to expand...

well I don't know about XP64 so I will not go there but as a rule the 5870 being twice what the 5770 isn't necessary going t be twice as fast in things like that, it could be faster or slower depending.
 
Well, it's a two-fer day. I found a deal on an XFX 5870, so that's on order. I also placed a pickup order for the 5770, so I should have that shortly (just waiting on the confirmation email).

If the 5770 test goes well, I'll have my "for real" 5870 on the way. If the 5770 test doesn't turn out so well, I can sell the 5870 unopened.
 
I have 30 days to return the 5770, with zero cost to me. So far, it's working great, although I've only done desktop stuff at this point.

My 5870 deal seems a little too good, so I have a feeling it might take a little while to ship or even get cancelled. It doesn't have the nice return policy (or immediate gratification) of the 5770. I wasn't really planning on buying a 5870 yet, but I stumbled across this deal today and couldn't pass it up. I figured it would be better to test with the 5770 in case problems arose, so I could sell the 5870 factory-sealed and hopefully get out of it without losing any cash if I needed to.

Now it's on to re-enabling the 9800GT and seeing about getting PhysX working.
 
if i were to suggest a decent videocard to anybody that didn't come here and were interested in doing some decent pc gaming, the 5770 is the first card i'd recommend. that said, the kind of performance people coming here are typically looking to achieve would require 5770cf or beyond. unless, you are using resolutions below 19x12/1080p. in which case, the 5770 is really all you need for quite a while
 
InvisiBill said:
Well, it's a two-fer day. I found a deal on an XFX 5870, so that's on order. I also placed a pickup order for the 5770, so I should have that shortly (just waiting on the confirmation email).

If the 5770 test goes well, I'll have my "for real" 5870 on the way. If the 5770 test doesn't turn out so well, I can sell the 5870 unopened.
Click to expand...

well then please post your 5770 experience. its not the card I use but was quite impressed with it. (runs great on my moms low wattage HTPC I made for her)
 
Valset said:
well then please post your 5770 experience. its not the card I use but was quite impressed with it. (runs great on my moms low wattage HTPC I made for her)
Click to expand...

Well, first major issue with my ATI & Nvidia hybrid system... Apparently there's an issue with the Nvidia drivers on XP64, seemingly related to having ATI drivers installed too. http://www.google.com/search?q=the+driver+is+mismanaging+system+PTEs.+0x000000DA This has been reported since March 2007, so I don't see it getting fixed anytime soon. MS and Nvidia were apparently blaming each other, and slipstreamed installs fixed it for some people. I've been running XP64 for years, through a bunch of different Nvidia driver versions and cards (8600GT through GTX285). I've never seen this problem until yesterday after installing the 5770. I'm convinced it's related to having both drivers, though I don't know enough to say it's specifically Nvidia/ATI/MS actually causing the issue.

Guess I'll probably be considering that Win7 upgrade sooner than I planned. At least I'll get DX11 and iTunes out of it...
 
And a small issue with the new Win7 install... CCC doesn't like to run when you've got the Nvidia card running (I've got my 9800GT running my second monitor). It complains that it doesn't support the current GPU. If I limit the desktop to the first monitor, CCC will open, and I can re-enable the second monitor after closing CCC.

This is mildly annoying, but I prefer to have the second monitor running off the second card, to avoid any performance drops on the main one when gaming.

Still working on things...
 
edifyingkarma said:
but overall both companies have decent drivers.

There are many fanboys that tout driver issues in the opposing brand because it help aid their irrational choice of remaining loyal to one brand.

I'm not saying that you'll never run into a driver issue, but you are just as likely to do so from either company's driver set.
Click to expand...

I completely disagree on that first part. Fully agree on the second two though.

Both drivers are complete shit in different ways. But as Brent says, at least they aren't creative drivers!
 
edifyingkarma said:
Go straight to the 5850, 5870, or 5970. Testing a lower end card doesn't make sense. Driver issues between both companies have been all but eliminated. Occasionally you'll run into a hiccup in a driver, or tragically, a driver that blows up you card (one of Nvidia's recent ones), but overall both companies have decent drivers.
Click to expand...
Really?
Perhaps you can explain why I can't play more than 3 Minutes of BFBC2 at a time without system hanging on my 5770?
 
osalcido said:
Really?
Perhaps you can explain why I can't play more than 3 Minutes of BFBC2 at a time without system hanging on my 5770?
Click to expand...

Probably because you're doing it wrong. Seriously, drivers work about the same on either brand. The nVidia ones have a more polished "look" to it, but functionally, I haven't been able to tell the difference between my 8800 GTX and my new HD 5850.
 
osalcido said:
Really?
Perhaps you can explain why I can't play more than 3 Minutes of BFBC2 at a time without system hanging on my 5770?
Click to expand...

BFBC2 works fine on my 4850 for hours at a time and on my laptop with the hd 3200 in use r the 4300 in use.

I don't have any problems.

I would use driver cleaner and make sure all traces of old drivers(both nvidia and ati are gone) then i'd redownload and reinstall the new ati drivers.

If its still not working then I'm going to believe you don't actual have an ati card
 
Your idea of "testing" a low end card makes no sense and is a waste of money. I had a 5770 for a while and it was a killer...
 
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