Is the 5870 worth the premium over the 5850 for eyefinity?

TwinIon · Post by **TwinIon** » 28 Oct 2009, 19:19

I'm updating my rig for eyefinity, and I'm trying to decide how to best spend my cash. I have to update both the gpu (obviously) and the CPU. The CPU side of things is either going to be a Q9550 or replace the whole thing with a i5/i7 setup. So I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to go with a 5870 or if I'm better off with a 5850 and a faster cpu.

It's about the same price to get a Core i5 (along with mobo/RAM) and a 5850 as it is to get a Q9550 and a 5870.

So I suppose what it boils down to is a question of where the bottlenecks come in with eyefinity. If a socket 775 system and a Q9550 will hold back a 5870, I would probably be better off with an i5 and 5850, possibly upgrading to a crossfire setup when thats enabled to work with eyefinity.

What do you all think? Where is the bottleneck in your experience?

BTW, I'll be running 3 x 24" @ 1080p. Thanks for any info.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 28 Oct 2009, 21:22

10-15% performance boost.

50% price premium.

Depends how much you want to spend/save and the desire to have Core i5 over LGA775. :)

At higher resolutions (particularly TripleHead resolutions) all modern games are GPU limited.

Post by **suiken_2mieu** » 28 Oct 2009, 21:35

My personal experience with gaming rigs says that the cpu is less of an issue than the GFX card. Unless you play TONS or software rendered games, i'd go for the 5870. BTW, there are very little to none modern games that use alot of software rendering. The only one recently i can think of i WoW. And you run that on like any machine.

Cygone · Post by **Cygone** » 28 Oct 2009, 22:36

5870 has a performance boost of approx 15%

If u can wait to run CrossFireX Eyefinity (when its supported) your 3rd option would be 2x5850's for about 160% of a single 5870 for an additional 33% cost over the single 5870.

Keeping in mind that you will need at a very minimum a 650W PSU, and a CrossFire certified main board.

This is the option i have gone with atm. You can use Eyefinity for your triple head gaming, and if the performance is taking a hit, turn on crossfire and run a single panel.

Post by **BHawthorne** » 28 Oct 2009, 23:31

If there is any question on cost just go 5850 and CrossFire later as needed.

horrido · Post by **horrido** » 08 Nov 2009, 23:54

5850's are north of $300 because of limited supply - only one I can find is $319. At newegg they are $300 but OOS. 5870's are just under $400, so you are paying a 20-25% premium for 15% gain. Not as simple anymore, because when you buy the 5870 you can crossfire it when the prices drop in a few years, and have a faster setup.

Post by **BHawthorne** » 09 Nov 2009, 19:07

Ick, price gouging. Wait for the supply chain to fill up again. No sense in throwing away money unless you have to.

Sideeffect · Post by **Sideeffect** » 09 Nov 2009, 21:13

Its nowhere near to 15% performance increase for a few reasons.

The memory chips are the same on the 5850 so they overclock to the same speed and same buss, same bandwidth. The 5850 has 2 x 6 pin connectors so it is not power starved which was the case with the 4850 and you can control the voltage with a BIOS flash. So the core can be clocked to the same speed.

A 5850 can be clocked to the same speeds as 5870 the only difference between the GPU's is 10% less Shaders and texture units on the 5850.

a 10% reduction in only shaders and texture units is not going to lead to a 15% performance loss when you consider everything else is the same like Memory bandwidth, memory size, clock speeds and ROP's.

Also The 5000 series is not shader limited it is ROP limited and the 5850 has the same number of ROPs (32). This leads to a 5% performance difference at most between a 5850 and 5870 which are clocked at the same speeds.

So you gain at most 5% performance by spending 50% more on the 5870. True story :wink:

The 5870 six 2GB version might be worth waiting for though as 2GB of Memory will certainly help with eyefinity resolutions.

flopper · Post by **flopper** » 10 Nov 2009, 11:34

Its nowhere near to 15% performance increase for a few reasons.

The memory chips are the same on the 5850 so they overclock to the same speed and same buss, same bandwidth. The 5850 has 2 x 6 pin connectors so it is not power starved which was the case with the 4850 and you can control the voltage with a BIOS flash. So the core can be clocked to the same speed.

A 5850 can be clocked to the same speeds as 5870 the only difference between the GPU's is 10% less Shaders and texture units on the 5850.

a 10% reduction in only shaders and texture units is not going to lead to a 15% performance loss when you consider everything else is the same like Memory bandwidth, memory size, clock speeds and ROP's.

Also The 5000 series is not shader limited it is ROP limited and the 5850 has the same number of ROPs (32). This leads to a 5% performance difference at most between a 5850 and 5870 which are clocked at the same speeds.

So you gain at most 5% performance by spending 50% more on the 5870. True story :wink:

The 5870 six 2GB version might be worth waiting for though as 2GB of Memory will certainly help with eyefinity resolutions.

agrees and head nod.
this is why I went with a 5850.
saved some cash, and overclocking it to 1050mhz was easy.
just running 900/1100 24/7 as far before I get some passiv cooling for ram/vrm.

YouTube · Post by **ViciousXUSMC** » 10 Nov 2009, 12:09

Its nowhere near to 15% performance increase for a few reasons.

The memory chips are the same on the 5850 so they overclock to the same speed and same buss, same bandwidth. The 5850 has 2 x 6 pin connectors so it is not power starved which was the case with the 4850 and you can control the voltage with a BIOS flash. So the core can be clocked to the same speed.

A 5850 can be clocked to the same speeds as 5870 the only difference between the GPU's is 10% less Shaders and texture units on the 5850.

a 10% reduction in only shaders and texture units is not going to lead to a 15% performance loss when you consider everything else is the same like Memory bandwidth, memory size, clock speeds and ROP's.

Also The 5000 series is not shader limited it is ROP limited and the 5850 has the same number of ROPs (32). This leads to a 5% performance difference at most between a 5850 and 5870 which are clocked at the same speeds.

So you gain at most 5% performance by spending 50% more on the 5870. True story :wink:

The 5870 six 2GB version might be worth waiting for though as 2GB of Memory will certainly help with eyefinity resolutions.

I agree with you, but the question is what happens when you overclock the 5870?? It goes ahead again, maybe not 15% but when your at the margin of 25 vs 30fps thats the difference between playable and not playable and with no crossfire support for eyefinity in sight yet I felt personally it was a safer bet to get the 5870.

I had crossfire 4850's and upgraded to the 5870 and I was very happy to get away from dual cards and could not justify the move to a 5850 as it probably would have been not as powerful as my current 4850 crossfire.

To tell the truth there have been a few games so far that sit at like 30fps when on high settings, so I think the 4850 would not have made the cut. The 2GB Six maybe would have been worth the wait but who knows how expensive that card will be, and it may require some $$$ for adapters too.

I happen to have 3x U2410 all of them support display port but we do not know if mini DP --> Full DP will be included in the box yet.

I think I will hold out for the 5870X2 and make that the next logical upgrade from a single 5870, I cant even fit another one of them in my case in crossfire (P182) and a P45 mobo like I use drops from 16x to 8x on each slot in crossfire and in high resolutions that has been shown to decrease performance.

flopper · Post by **flopper** » 10 Nov 2009, 13:42

I think I will hold out for the 5870X2 and make that the next logical upgrade from a single 5870, I cant even fit another one of them in my case in crossfire (P182) and a P45 mobo like I use drops from 16x to 8x on each slot in crossfire and in high resolutions that has been shown to decrease performance.

the 5970 seems to be when crossfire and eyefinity works to be the card to get to run eyefinity reall well.
at least for a 3 screen setup.

soon I get my first taste of eyefinity woohoo.

YouTube · Post by **ViciousXUSMC** » 10 Nov 2009, 13:47

Have not heard any details on a 5970, what is it just an overclocked 5870 or something more?

Nevermind as usual google answered my question for me, looks like it IS the 5870X2 just a new name scheme.

That card looks awesome, can't wait to see some performance/price/eyefinity details out of it.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 10 Nov 2009, 13:49

AMD decided that people couldn't understand the idea behind the 'X2' suffix on 4870, so the 5870X2 is now the 5970... apparently.

There is way too much FUD flying everywhere about everything in the computer world at the minute. It's almost funny to watch. But it does make determining fact from fiction a nightmare.

flopper · Post by **flopper** » 10 Nov 2009, 14:55

AMD decided that people couldn't understand the idea behind the 'X2' suffix on 4870, so the 5870X2 is now the 5970... apparently.

There is way too much FUD flying everywhere about everything in the computer world at the minute. It's almost funny to watch. But it does make determining fact from fiction a nightmare.

you mean like nvidia showing a card that dosnt exist?
as an example of Fermi?
:lol:

yea 5970 is easier to get than x2...

TwinIon · Post by **TwinIon** » 11 Nov 2009, 03:37

If there is any question on cost just go 5850 and CrossFire later as needed.

This is what I ended up doing. Found myself a 5850 at frys today for MSRP ($270) to accompany the i5 I picked up last week. Unfortunately I'm unable to put it together for a couple days.

Now I just need to figure out my monitor situation....

Sideeffect · Post by **Sideeffect** » 11 Nov 2009, 04:19

I agree with you, but the question is what happens when you overclock the 5870?? It goes ahead again, maybe not 15% but when your at the margin of 25 vs 30fps thats the difference between playable and not playable and with no crossfire support for eyefinity in sight yet I felt personally it was a safer bet to get the 5870.

I had crossfire 4850's and upgraded to the 5870 and I was very happy to get away from dual cards and could not justify the move to a 5850 as it probably would have been not as powerful as my current 4850 crossfire.

To tell the truth there have been a few games so far that sit at like 30fps when on high settings, so I think the 4850 would not have made the cut. The 2GB Six maybe would have been worth the wait but who knows how expensive that card will be, and it may require some $$$ for adapters too.

I happen to have 3x U2410 all of them support display port but we do not know if mini DP --> Full DP will be included in the box yet.

I think I will hold out for the 5870X2 and make that the next logical upgrade from a single 5870, I cant even fit another one of them in my case in crossfire (P182) and a P45 mobo like I use drops from 16x to 8x on each slot in crossfire and in high resolutions that has been shown to decrease performance.

I havn't noticed people getting higher overclocks on the 5870 except for the people who have performed volt mods and replaced coolers and this could be done on the 5850 as well.

My Asus 5850 does
850 Mhz core and 1251 MHz Memory at 1.1v
976 Mhz core and 1251Mhz Memory at 1.187v

Thats pretty much as good as the 5870's I have seen on forums and there is more in the card I just chose to stop adding voltage.

The 5% difference from the extra shaders would be more like the difference between 28.5 FPS and 30 FPS. Your example of 5 FPS difference on a 30FPS game would be 16.6 % additional performance which as stated before is not the case on equally clocked cards.

I also upgraded from a 4850 and went from 1.1 TFLOPS of performance and 11 minute 30 second Collatz Conjecture runs to 2.8 TFLOPs and 4 mins 20 seconds with the overclocked 5850. Thats a gain of 2.5x. Gaming performance is also about that much better.

The 5850 on paper seems limited but all the limits are superficial. The 4850 had very real limitations for example DDR3 vs the DDR5 on the 4870 killed the bandwidth. The 1 x PCI-e 6 pin connector limited the card to 150 watts of power draw and ruined any overclocking.

However yes for some games every extra helps and if you have the extra money why not :D

You should consider the 5950 (5850x2) as your next upgrade step for all the reasons discussed and it will be a shorter card maybe even only as long as a 5870. The only problem would be if the card had less power connections available limiting its clocks which is a possiblity.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 11 Nov 2009, 04:43

I wouldn't say that the limits are superficial, in fact that are just less obvious. The boards have different layouts which can affect performance and the 5850 has a 3 phase power supply while the 5870 has a 4 phase. The reference cooler on the 5870 has a significantly higher TDP as well

Sideeffect · Post by **Sideeffect** » 11 Nov 2009, 07:16

I wouldn't say that the limits are superficial, in fact that are just less obvious. The boards have different layouts which can affect performance and the 5850 has a 3 phase power supply while the 5870 has a 4 phase. The reference cooler on the 5870 has a significantly higher TDP as well

Thanks Dave thats interesting to know about the power supply. Any limitations of the 3 phase power supply doesn't seem to effect clocks below 1Ghz though.

It could also be argued that the smaller size of the 5850 allows more options for cooling surrounding the card :lol:

Anyway i'll shut up now both cards are awesome :twothumb

Widescreen Gaming Forum