Nvidia Equivalent to XFX 5850

[prn1357]

So I had a 5850 for a while, and I want to go back to the green side because of cuda and PhysX ( But mostly better drivers). What is the Nvidia Equivalent to 5850? Is it the 470? Should I get a 570 just for the new tech?

Also, I am worried about heat and power usage. Will they use more than the ATI card? My room gets extremely hot in the summer, and I can't get my room any hotter. Are the 5xx cards cooler than the 4xx, or not? Also, thaws the power usage difference?


Thanks

 

[Rizen]

5-series run much cooler than 4-series.

Technically the 470 would be about 5850 speed, but 470s run pretty warm and loud, so if heat is a concern I'd step up to the 570.

 

[kllrnohj]

So I had a 5850 for a while, and I want to go back to the green side because of cuda and PhysX ( But mostly better drivers). What is the Nvidia Equivalent to 5850? Is it the 470?

Yes. The "better drivers" thing is just a grass is always greener on the other side bullshit line idiots spew, though. There isn't any truth to it.

Should I get a 570 just for the new tech?

Yes (and it's faster and uses less power than the 470)

Also, I am worried about heat and power usage. Will they use more than the ATI card?

Absolutely, and by quite a bit.

Are the 5xx cards cooler than the 4xx, or not?

Yes, slightly, but still pretty far behind ATI's 5xxx series.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4051/nvidias-geforce-gtx-570-filling-in-the-gaps/15

Load in Crysis the 5850 uses about 90w less than the 570, and it uses about 150w less in furmark.

 

[[H]jimmy]

Thats funny, every poll conducted here as to driver quality shows the [H] community disagreeing with you.

ATI cards have been more powerful for the money for the last couple of years and Nvidia has had much better drivers for many years. Anyone who disagrees is looking through green or red colored glasses...

To answer the OP's question everything from a GTX 470 and up would be better for you than a 5850. Definitely get the 570 if your budget can accomodate it. Personally I would get a 6870 or GTX 460 1gb before I would touch a 5850. Tesselation will continue to increase in importance which the 5850 is bad at, and crossfire scaling on the 5850 is horrible.

The 570's are cooler.

 

[prn1357]

Yes. The "better drivers" thing is just a grass is always greener on the other side bullshit line idiots spew, though. There isn't any truth to it.

That is False. I just upgraded to the newest ATI drivers (10.12) and my video card driver keeps crashing, and YouTube is glitchy. There were problems with other drivers, too. The best drivers from ATI is 10.5a which was released in may.

So If I were to sell my 5850 ( xfx reference used for 3/4 of a year - Never OC'd) How much would I get? And Which Nvidia card uses the same power and outputs the same heat as my 5850?

 

[Rizen]

I had a 5870CF setup before my NVIDIA GTX 580 SLI setup and I had no problems with drivers on either side, honestly. The 5870CF setup was a bit hit or miss with the SLI scaling, but that's not the case with 57xx and 6800/6900 series. Drivers shouldn't really be a concern either way, they both work fairly well.

The GTX580s are a lot more powerful than my 5870s were though.

 

[jbz7890]

The GTX 460 1gb should be able to easily surpass the 5850 with an overclock.

 

[DOOMHAMMA]

Last thread bringing up drivers had the [H] forum pretty divided on the quality of drivers for both sides. Nvidia killed GPU's twice and has had some real stinkers, especially for 2xx series cards. ATI/AMD deals with new tech like eyefinity and therefore flakiness, but they don't get enough credit for what they do.

I think it's pretty lame to say Nvidia has awesome, superior drivers when they flat out killed GPU's.

For the record, I am 50/50 with my card usage.
Own/Owned: GeForce 8800, 250, 280, 460. Radeon 4850, 5770, 5850, 5870.

You would get $180 tops for your XFX 5850.

 

[Ultima99]

Yes. The "better drivers" thing is just a grass is always greener on the other side bullshit line idiots spew, though. There isn't any truth to it.



Yes (and it's faster and uses less power than the 470)



Absolutely, and by quite a bit.



Yes, slightly, but still pretty far behind ATI's 5xxx series.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4051/nvidias-geforce-gtx-570-filling-in-the-gaps/15

Load in Crysis the 5850 uses about 90w less than the 570, and it uses about 150w less in furmark.

Don't let the power consumption numbers above bother you too much, its true you'll have an increase and ATI cards are more efficient power consumption wise, but the 570 is a class above a 5850 for sure.

 

[WhiteZero]

That is False. I just upgraded to the newest ATI drivers (10.12) and my video card driver keeps crashing, and YouTube is glitchy. There were problems with other drivers, too. The best drivers from ATI is 10.5a which was released in may.

Ditto.
I went from the 10.9 to 10.12 series ATi/AMD drivers to my nVidia card, and I must say, that grass is indeed greener on this side.

 

[[H]jimmy]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1570074&highlight=poll+drivers

Seems like a 3-1 vote in favor of Nvidia having the better drivers to me.

That doesn't mean that Nvidia is better. Just that they make better drivers most of the time. I still bought 2 4850's instead of 2 9800gt's when they were the same price. Why? Because ATI was more powerful for the same money and their drivers were good enough.

Now hurry up and go vote for ATI because you feel the need to support your buying choice.

 

[Valset]

That is False. I just upgraded to the newest ATI drivers (10.12) and my video card driver keeps crashing, and YouTube is glitchy. There were problems with other drivers, too. The best drivers from ATI is 10.5a which was released in may.

So If I were to sell my 5850 ( xfx reference used for 3/4 of a year - Never OC'd) How much would I get? And Which Nvidia card uses the same power and outputs the same heat as my 5850?

funny, I had to sell my last nvidia card due to driver issues. sorry but there are horror stories on both sides. look up gpu not being utilized to see the current Nvidia issue. its simply the current state of video cards.

at any rate the card your looking for isn't out just yet as there are high hopes for the 560GTX. its basically a non crippled GF104 based card that should be what the 460GTX should have been. (if your not up on that, the GF104 was underclocked and crippled, maybe to deliberately not compete with GF100 based cards.) the 560GTX should (hopefully, nvidia's card placements have been hit or miss, literally they are either real hits or bombs) directly compete with the 6870 (if the respin works it magic maybe better?)

if you have to buy now and can not support the higher power cards go with a 460GTX, good overclocked model. its not an upgrade (more of a down grade). but if you can wait a bit the 560GTX may be the card your looking for

 

[kllrnohj]

Thats funny, every poll conducted here as to driver quality shows the [H] community disagreeing with you.

ATI cards have been more powerful for the money for the last couple of years and Nvidia has had much better drivers for many years. Anyone who disagrees is looking through green or red colored glasses....

Go take a second look at those polls, and what you'll almost always see is the people who have been around longer saying the same thing I'm saying - neither is better. Then you see a bunch of n00bies arguing that one side is better.

Those of us who've actually been around a while and have a memory longer than 5 seconds knows that neither side is better. I've been using both sides since the 9700 Pro, and yet I've had more troubles with Nvidia's drivers than ATI's - FAR more. Mainly because for about a year Nvidia's Vista drivers were amazingly bad. Sure, ATI has given me a few minor annoyances here and there, but so has Nvidia. They both have problems, they both have advantages. ATI has yet to fry people's video cards, though. Also, Nvidia was responsible for the utter trainwreck that was the 7950GX2 - the card that was destroyed by shitty driver support.

Funny that you would link to a poll where you had to choose ATI or Nvidia without a "neither" option. As such, that poll really can't disagree with me. It could be 99% Nvidia or 99% ATI and it still would be meaningless.

The GTX 460 1gb should be able to easily surpass the 5850 with an overclock.

You'll need a pretty significant overclock and you could always OC the 5850 to blow past the 460 OC. 5850 = GTX 470, more or less.

 

[Dudenell]

for the past two years though the nvidia drives have been on top. Good luck in your sale

 

[Rizen]

for the past two years though the nvidia drives have been on top. Good luck in your sale

Really? What problems did you have with your 4xxx series ATI cards? I'll wait.

I've had, in the last two years, a 4850, a GTX280, a single 5870, 5870CF, and GTX580 SLI. I've had small issues with both and big issues with neither.

 

[digitaldurandal]

Gray Screen of Death through 2 or 4 drivers on the 5770 i bought my brother.

 

[DarrisBard]

I recently got an Asus GTX 460 768 mb. It is not as nearly as powerful as the 5850 but it is running cool. According to GPU-Z in my MATX case the 460 is at 33C. In my other machine I have a 4670. I haven't had problems with the drivers for either brand.

 

[magoo]

Really? What problems did you have with your 4xxx series ATI cards? I'll wait.

I've had, in the last two years, a 4850, a GTX280, a single 5870, 5870CF, and GTX580 SLI. I've had small issues with both and big issues with neither.

I second this.
I've had all those cards PLUS 4870X2,4870,4890,two GTX 285,two GTX 260, 5870 E6 in CF and now dual GTX 580s.

I had not one driver issue on either side. Now I was disappointed in Crossfire scaling, but I read where that seems to be pretty good with the 6970 cards.

Now back to your question.....5850 is a great card, my daughter uses on and it's running the 10.12 drivers rock solid.
If I was choosing an nvidia card, I'd buy the GTX 570.

 

[Valset]

I second this.
I've had all those cards PLUS 4870X2,4870,4890,two GTX 285,two GTX 260, 5870 E6 in CF and now dual GTX 580s.

I had not one driver issue on either side. Now I was disappointed in Crossfire scaling, but I read where that seems to be pretty good with the 6970 cards.

Now back to your question.....5850 is a great card, my daughter uses on and it's running the 10.12 drivers rock solid.
If I was choosing an nvidia card, I'd buy the GTX 570.

this I will give the fanbois, there was and is some sort of bug with the 5800 series and crossfire, everything scaled damn good except them.

I have to recommend that as well. 570GTX would be it. I would not turn my noise up at a pair of 460GTX either though. still neither is the value of the 6950 right now. matches the 570GTX in most games (real world H review, not the canned benchmarks) and uses far less power and heat. but if you want nvidia the 570GTX is it.

 

[pojut]

I've been with ATI since my 9800 Pro (with the exception of a 6 month fling with a 6800GT), but I gotta say, my next upgrade (purchasing next month) is going to be a 570. It meets or beats the 6970 in most real-world benchmarks (i.e. in games), is only $50 more, puts out about the same amount of heat and noise, and is physically smaller. Naturally, the 6950/70 are much better "bang for the buck", but if you can afford the $50 premium, it looks like it's worth it.

I'm usually a red kind of guy, but green has won me over for this generation.

 

[[H]jimmy]

Those of us that have been around long enough know that Nvidia's driver development team is heads and shoulders above ATI's. ATI's team has been growing and getting better with the acquisition by AMD. They have actually added a couple of devs to work on linux, where previously if you had a linux computer you went Nvidia period.

The poll is setup exactly the right way and comes to the obvious conclusion. One has to be better than the other. Are you trying to say that the driver development programs are exactly even and equal in every way all the time?

 

[stealthy123]

the poll was slanted, and with all the people running around saying that ATI drivers suck, of course the uninformed are going to pick Nvidia.

there should have been an option for neither.

I run both Nvidia and AMD currently and I don't think one is better or worse than the other, and in the past I have had problems with Nvidia drivers, but that was a long time ago and pretty irrelevant.

It's stupid how fast these things denigrate to "nuh huh, Nvidia sucks" or "nuh huh, AMD sucks"

It's all way overblown and over played at this point.

 

[kllrnohj]

Those of us that have been around long enough know that Nvidia's driver development team is heads and shoulders above ATI's. ATI's team has been growing and getting better with the acquisition by AMD. They have actually added a couple of devs to work on linux, where previously if you had a linux computer you went Nvidia period.

The poll is setup exactly the right way and comes to the obvious conclusion. One has to be better than the other. Are you trying to say that the driver development programs are exactly even and equal in every way all the time?

...says the guy who has been here a whopping 5 months. Linux support is a completely different story, though. ATI's driver support for Linux was shit until a couple of years ago. Now with AMD open sourcing stuff and the complete driver re-write two years back or so it is much much better, but I haven't used either AMD or Nvidia under Linux in a meaningful way long enough to really compare. The open source AMD drivers that were bundled with Ubuntu were good enough for Compiz, which was all I cared about.

No, the poll is flawed. Are they exactly equal in every way all the time? Of course not, don't be a fucking moron. Over any meaningful length of time is one clearly superior? Nope. Both have issues, both have problems, both have plenty of users bitching about them, and both have the vast majority having zero troubles whatsoever.

I've been with ATI since my 9800 Pro (with the exception of a 6 month fling with a 6800GT), but I gotta say, my next upgrade (purchasing next month) is going to be a 570. It meets or beats the 6970 in most real-world benchmarks (i.e. in games), is only $50 more, puts out about the same amount of heat and noise, and is physically smaller. Naturally, the 6950/70 are much better "bang for the buck", but if you can afford the $50 premium, it looks like it's worth it.

Huh? Are you confusing the 6950 with the 6970? The 6970 is $20 more than the 570. The 6950 is $50 less, performs the same in real world benchmarks (see [H]'s review), and uses less power to boot - why piss away $50 for nothing? Or rather, why not spend another $20 and get a faster card (aka, the 6970)? Then again, the 570 does seem to do better at lower resolutions, so it also depends on what res you play at. Personally I think this whole generation isn't worth it, I'm waiting for next gen. Nothing worth upgrading to from a 5870.

 

[[H]jimmy]

Your opinion is noted.

In a thread where the OP already realizes that Nvidia usually has better drivers.

Now we see that your just being an ass because you were proved wrong about the polls.

Troll on as the OP's question was already answered and you are now just providing entertainment to the 75% of forum users that know better.

 

[KENNYB]

Go take a second look at those polls, and what you'll almost always see is the people who have been around longer saying the same thing I'm saying - neither is better. Then you see a bunch of n00bies arguing that one side is better.

Those of us who've actually been around a while and have a memory longer than 5 seconds knows that neither side is better. I've been using both sides since the 9700 Pro, and yet I've had more troubles with Nvidia's drivers than ATI's - FAR more.

You blast the noobs and you make a blanket statement like that? I've been using both since my Ti200 and ATI has been FAR worse for me. You always mention the 9700 PRO like ATI somehow turned a corner then, but you fail to mention that series had some of the shittiest launch drivers ever written, only topped by nVidia's fry-your-card driver.

My 9500 PRO is the only card I've ever wanted to shoot. The series that coined the phrase, "VPU recover" and made 8bit crash to desktops fashionable. And AMDs recent 10.12 driver is another shitty mess that reminds me of nVidia's launch Vista drivers BSOD from sleep issues.

 

[WorldExclusive]

ATI cards have been more powerful for the money for the last couple of years and Nvidia has had much better drivers for many years. Anyone who disagrees is looking through green or red colored glasses...

+1

Probably the best assessment of both AMD and Nvidia given in a long time.

 

[compudocs]

That is False. I just upgraded to the newest ATI drivers (10.12) and my video card driver keeps crashing, and YouTube is glitchy. There were problems with other drivers, too. The best drivers from ATI is 10.5a which was released in may.

This is false. How many drivers have ATI released that killed cards? Nvidia has released 2. A set of drivers years ago that caused FX 5800's to die while in screen saver mode and the drivers a couple months ago that caused cards to die as well. I cannot recall any drivers ATI released that caused video cards to die like that.

ATI has driver issues, Nvidia has driver issues. Neither is perfect EVER. Anyone saying otherwise needs to crack open a driver history book and tally up the the score and in the end it should be equal though as stated before, I do not recall ATI ever releasing a driver that was the root cause of video cards dying like Nvidia has done twice now.

Nvidia release more drivers than ATI does which is true so you can say that is better support but is quantity really better than quality? Untill someone wants to recap the ENTIRE ATI and Nvidia driver history and bar graph it month to month and show percentages and severity of issues the driver thing is a buncha BS. They both have usable drivers and they both fixa bad driver when it appears so give it a rest.

On topic, I like the tech and speed of the Nvidia parts but anymore I have to go with what is cooler and uses less power for silence so my opinion would be get an ATI 6xxx card if you can.

 

[prn1357]

Thanks everybody. I'm in no rush to get a new card. I think i saw someone mention a 560. Does anyone have any info on that?

 

[kllrnohj]

You blast the noobs and you make a blanket statement like that? I've been using both since my Ti200 and ATI has been FAR worse for me. You always mention the 9700 PRO like ATI somehow turned a corner then, but you fail to mention that series had some of the shittiest launch drivers ever written, only topped by nVidia's fry-your-card driver.

No, that was simply when I joined the enthusiast game. I can't speak about anything before that.

For what it's worth, over the past 10 years Nvidia has been FAR worse for me and my friends. In the group of us, only the Nvidia cards have given any of us any troubles whatsoever, but those were rare as well. That is to say, both sides have been great (but we've only had to RMA Nvidia cards...)

The simple fact is 99% of people don't have any problems whatsoever with either ATI or Nvidia. Everyone here has almost definitely had a bad experience with one side. Assuming everyone's experience has matched your own is just ignorant and arrogant.

My 9500 PRO is the only card I've ever wanted to shoot. The series that coined the phrase, "VPU recover" and made 8bit crash to desktops fashionable.

I remember that VPU recovery crap. I also remember I only ever had VPU crashes if I turned VPU recovery on. Turned that shit off and all the problems went away.

And AMDs recent 10.12 driver is another shitty mess that reminds me of nVidia's launch Vista drivers BSOD from sleep issues.

10.12's have been rock solid for me, zero problems with multi monitors or eyefinity. Like I said, your experiences are most definitely NOT the normal experience. And that's all the "better driver" bullshit boils down to - people taking their experiences and assuming everyone has the same problems.

 

[Tsumi]

560 is not yet released, we don't know what its performance will be like.

Don't bother going for a HD6970, just get a 6950 and flash it to the 6970 bios (works in almost all 6950's as far as I've read). Then you can have a 6970 for much less (like unlocking a Phenom II x3 to x4). Worst case scenario, switch to the backup bios and restore the original 6950 bios.

 

[TeeJay]

ATI always ran cooler with less power than nV...And this:

5-series run much cooler than 4-series.

Technically the 470 would be about 5850 speed, but 470s run pretty warm and loud, so if heat is a concern I'd step up to the 570.

Should be your answer.

 

[tannat]

Thanks everybody. I'm in no rush to get a new card. I think i saw someone mention a 560. Does anyone have any info on that?

It's bound for January. Expect around HD5850 speed, or even HD6870.