Upgrade from 5850...when to bite

A

Andy735

n00b
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
Messages
54
I have a MSI Twin Frozer II 5850 1GB card currently and I game on a 25 inch screen at 1920X1080. I play a mixture of games from FPS, Skyrim, and Civ 5.

With the new round of next generation cards coming out I have noticed some interesting deals such as 560 Ti 448s for $240 or 2gb 6950s also around $250. These look to me like very nice deals as they normally also include a game.

However, with the new generations coming out I am not sure if I should wait and see. I have never spent more than $275 on a card and am not looking to move from that (Up to $300 max).

My main concern is that the 7800s series will be a lot like the 6800s and just be die shrinks. Additionally rumor has the 78501gb starting at $199. I am hoping to get a 2gb card to aid with hi res packs. Then we have Kepler but I don't think it will launch soon.

My question then becomes when does it become price effective to buy a new card? This is saying I can get $75 to $100 dollars for my old one.
 
if you oc your 5850 then a gtx560ti or 6950 would not be much of an upgrade at all. at this point you should just wait a couple more months for the next gen of cards to come out. also you did not list the rest of your specs.
 
I have a 2500k at 4.4 GHz and 8 gigs of ram. I have the 5850 OC'd to the maximum allowed values in amd's overdrive suite.

My main concern is when to cash out so to speak. I am afraid that if I wait to long the 5850 will devalue way to much. In some cases (counting free games and selling my card) I can gain 15-20% performance for 50 bucks all the while doubling my video card's ram. Like I said I just don't believe Kepler will launch soon enough to effect the 7000s series pricing and the deals to be had now are great. I wouldn't have considered a 6950 or 570 before but at these prices and incentives it seems to make more reasonable.
 
Cash out now if you don't want the value to go lower...
Otherwise the difference won't be enormous.
 
Sorta the same boat here, I'm waiting to see what comes out. Currently it seems that a single 7970 is about as fast or faster than my CFX (and overclocked to 5870 speeds) 5850's. With lower power and ability to CFX down the road I may just save up for that myself. Of course if Kepler really is $300 and performs within 10% of a 7970, I may double up on that and be set for another 3 years (amazing, got my 5850s in 2009 and it took until 2012 for me to consider thinking about maybe replacing them). Of coarse word came out that the Kepler rumor was BS, but honestly if nVida was run by executives with equal business sense that I have in my pinky, they would indeed release a card that offers 10% lower performance than the 7970 for $300. Worked great for AMD (then ATI) when they did that with the Radeon 4870 vs Geforce GTX 280....

Examples:

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/109/bench/Crysis_02.png

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/109/bench/DMC4_02.png

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/109/bench/ETQW_02.png

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/109/bench/SC_02.png

Imagine if the GTX660 performs as close to the 7970 as the 4870 performed compared to the GTX280? Dunno about you, but I'll happily wait till April.
 
Last edited:
Of course if the Radeon 7870 has the following specs:

Stream Processors: 1356
Texture Units: 88
ROPs: 24
Core Clock: 975mhz
Memory Clocks: 5.5Ghz DDR5
Memory Bus Width: 256-Bit
Frame Buffer: 2GB

Price: $280-$300
Peformance: Within 15-20% of the 7970.

That may be worth waiting for, but I just made up those specs and totally don't have any inside information or anything.
 
Rauelius said:
Of course if the Radeon 7870 has the following specs:

Stream Processors: 1356
Texture Units: 88
ROPs: 24
Core Clock: 975mhz
Memory Clocks: 5.5Ghz DDR5
Memory Bus Width: 256-Bit
Frame Buffer: 2GB

Price: $280-$300
Peformance: Within 15-20% of the 7970.

That may be worth waiting for, but I just made up those specs and totally don't have any inside information or anything.
Click to expand...

If those are the specs I don't think it will be within 15-20% of a 7970. It's giving up a ton of stream processors, texture units, a few ROPS, and since it's 256-bit, a lot of memory bandwidth.

OP,

Upgrading to anything now in the $250.00 range probably isn't worth it. A 6950 performs the same as your 5850.

The best bet for you would probably be to buy a used 5850 for $125.00 or so and CrossFire them. Either that or wait for the 7890.
 
A 6950 performs the same as your 5850.[/QUOTE said:
Thank you for making me feel happy that I never slide-graded to the latest gen cards circa 2011 (Radeon 69xx and Geforce 5xx). I will say that from what I've seen with newer games and games that use heavy tesselation, that the 6950 does wipe the floor with the 5850 by as much a 50% more performance though in a small (but slightly growing) amount of circumstances. Even with CFX the 5850 has difficulty keeping up with a single 6950, again in those small circumstances. Regardless, the 5850 probably has a couple good years left in it for some 1080p gaming, so I would hold out for the GTX660, Radeon 7870, 7850 and the mentioned 7890, which may very well run along the lines of the 5830 and 6790.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/295?vs=293

Even better reference:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1572985
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
your in a unique position. 5850 video card value is at a high right now because of bitcoin. so the temptation to sell is there, but from a performance standpoint I think you will probably be disappointed unless your playing the latest games (metro 2033, BF3, etc) the games i mostly play would be thrilled with just a single 5830.

if you want to sell, i bet you could get $320+ ish for your pair 5850s then get a single 7950 when they come out soon...
 
My personal tactic for upgrading is that the new GPU or CPU I buy must have about double the power of my previous system. (eg. I upgrade from HD5870 (P4800 3dmark11) to HD7970 (P8380 in 3dmark11)).

The thing is that HD5850 is not a bad card even right now but I've heard that Xfire for this card doesnt scale as well as the HD6000 (and thats why I never bought a 2nd HD5870 for my system).

The other GPUs you have listed will not be a real upgrade, you are going to spend that much money for just around 20% performance? (Imagine if you are playing at 30fps Skyrim this means you will play with 36fps, worth it?)

Just as other users said, the HD5850 performs the same as the equivalents of the newer generation cards, the HD6950 and HD6870 (I think the 6950 is around 10% faster than the 5850).

Since you mention that you could wait abit, I think thats what you should do. Wait for more HD7000 series and nVidia's answer and buy once you will have a plethora of choises. Right now you are stuck with a HD7950 in order to see a real improvement, and that one will definately have a small drop in prices a month later and when nvidia has their cards out.
 
You have two options.
1. You can wait until the next big thing comes out, but then you could always be waiting for the next big thing

2. You could buy now and live with your choices, but it might not be as fast as the next big thing might be.

Each one is a valid response to a valid problem. So, as yoda says, Do or Do not do. There is no try...
 
I have a 5850 that was running Skyrim on high, not Ultra. I took a chance and flashed the bios to a MSI 5870 and bang! Skyrim on Ultra, huge difference. The clock on the card went from 775/1000 to 850/1200, I bumped it to 900 and the card still runs fine on stock cooling.
Before the bios flash I could not get this card to budge on an OC enough to notice.
Good luck, you may be able to buy yourself six months and watch the prices drop.
 
its hard to guess what the 7870 will be, more interesting if this chart is correct which it seems to be, the 7890 will be a interesting card.

I'm really just waiting for reviews on these cards. I have two 6870's-1gbs now in crossfire, running 3X1080. I don't think i am going to wait for Kepler. I am about to buy a 7970, but figured i would wait to see what the rest of the series offers. 7870's in crossfire might be a very appealing, or 7890's in crossfire.

at the original poster a single 5850, can push 1080P pretty well. Might want to look at used 6970, i am sure there are few floating around after people have purchased the 7970's. Then again you can always wait and see what kepler and the rest of the 7XXX series brings.
r31yv3d.jpg
 
560 TI 448's are supposedly equal to or better than a 570. Which according to the tomshardware chart is 2 tiers better. Although there may be good deals on video cards, do you think it'll justify the purchase even though your 5850 is doing fine?
 
DrakeLi said:
560 TI 448's are supposedly equal to or better than a 570. Which according to the tomshardware chart is 2 tiers better. Although there may be good deals on video cards, do you think it'll justify the purchase even though your 5850 is doing fine?
Click to expand...

I think I am going to wait and see what Kepler brings now or at least the 7800s. The problem that I have with the 5850 is it struggles with modded skyrim. I also worry about the added features of tessellation in some games because the 5850 gets destroyed by the 570 in such cases. Also with the next generation of consoles coming maybe the 5850 will not work as nicely with ports. (Again fear of tessellation and one gig ram limitations)
 
Darksword said:
A 6950 performs the same as your 5850.
Click to expand...

What? A 6950 should be decently faster than a 5850, though probably not enough to justify an upgrade to one. Heck, the 6870 should be slightly faster than a 5850. Where are you getting the idea that a 5850 is equivalent to a 6950?

The reviews I've looked at show the 6950 performing around 25% better than a 5850, though if a 5850 isn't getting the job done, a 25% performance increase probably won't be enough.
 
I have both the 5850 overclocked and a 6950 unlocked and slightly overclocked.

I tested both at stock settings and noticed smother game play with the 6950 mostly due to the res i was running at the time 3840x1024 the extra V ram helped a lot.

In newer games the 6950 made it possible to run games at damn near max settings when tested at 1920x1200 res compared to the 5850 where i had to lower some settings to get what i considered acceptable game play.

To me it was worth the $ for the upgrade, it was not a giant performance leap but it was very notacable in the games i play.

I don't play the benchmark game what i care about is game play.
 
Darksword said:
OP,

Upgrading to anything now in the $250.00 range probably isn't worth it. A 6950 performs the same as your 5850.

The best bet for you would probably be to buy a used 5850 for $125.00 or so and CrossFire them. Either that or wait for the 7890.
Click to expand...

I was in the same position as OP about 10 months ago. Except used 5850's were worth $160. I bought a Reference MSI 2GB 6950 for $235 after rebate.

Don't listen to me though, it was just my personal experience with both cards and it was easily worth the money!

1. 6950 does NOT perform the same as a 5850. I noticed a huge difference in performance. But, my resolution is 5040x1050 or 3150x1680 (3x22"). I notice probably close to 50% performance difference. Games were not playable on Eyefinity with a single 5850. FPS was usually 20-30 on medium details.

2. CFX scaling with 58xx series is 50-70%. Add microstuttering problems and I dared not venture there.
 
J Macker said:
I was in the same position as OP about 10 months ago. Except used 5850's were worth $160. I bought a Reference MSI 2GB 6950 for $235 after rebate.

Don't listen to me though, it was just my personal experience with both cards and it was easily worth the money!

1. 6950 does NOT perform the same as a 5850. I noticed a huge difference in performance. But, my resolution is 5040x1050 or 3150x1680 (3x22"). I notice probably close to 50% performance difference. Games were not playable on Eyefinity with a single 5850. FPS was usually 20-30 on medium details.

2. CFX scaling with 58xx series is 50-70%. Add microstuttering problems and I dared not venture there.
Click to expand...
Exactly. I did a quick comparison when I updgraded from a 5850 to a 6950 last year: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1586721 . At stock you're looking at a ~25-35% jump. Overclocked, the 5850 closes the game and it's closer to a 10-20% difference. Also, as J Macker said, the CF scaling is going to be much better. Overall, the 6xxx cards are much better in newer, DX 11 games. However, this isn't last year, and I wouldn't dump that kind of money into year-old hardware. The 78xx cards will not disappoint if the 7970 is any indication of the power of GCN - this thing dominates.
 
The 78xx cards will not disappoint if the 7970 is any indication of the power of GCN - this thing dominates.
Click to expand...

the 7870/7850 are based on the old architecture (256bit memory bus). Not the new GCN, the 7890 is based on the GCN though (384bit memory bus).

either way based on the stream processors, core and memory clocks, the 7870 should be a tad faster than the 6970, or on par with it. The 7890 will be a very interesting card with 384bit memory bus you are looking at 1.5gb of vram or 3gb. I hope its 3gb, but given the nature that it is a 7890 prolly 1.5gb.

these cards cannot come out soon enough. If only the 7970 was 100$ cheaper.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top