Downgrade from 5850 to GTX460?

[Bluescreendeath]

So I currently have a pair of 5850s. They're great, and suit my needs perfectly.

Should I downgrade/horizontal-grade to a pair of GTX460s? They look very tempting...very overclock-able, consumes about the same amount of energy, will run 5-10'C cooler than my 5850s, and perform worse than the 5850 at stock. But the SLi scaling is amazing!

:lol:

 

[ares1214]

ehhh, tbh, id wait a bit. a "475" of sorts will likely come out soon, and the 460 needs to be given some time to mature and prices to drop. however, if you cant wait, i still wouldnt do it. it isnt really worth the trouble unless you can sell the 5850s for more than the cost of 2 460s, as yes, imo the 460 is a better card, but u wont see much more performance.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Well, the 5850 is about 20% better a single GTX460 and two 5850s are about 10% better than 2xGTX460s.

I can sell my 5850s for slightly more than it cost to get two GTX460s.

My main amazement is that it can overclock and increase its performance by 30%, it runs cooler than 5850 and 5830, and scales amazingly in SLi... =)

Btw, does Fermi cards have anything equivalent to AMD's Eyefinity?

 

[ares1214]

yes, it does do all those things, but it really isnt worth it. and theres nvidia suround, same basic concept, however you need sli to do it. id wait until nvidia fully unleashes Fermi 104 in the form of a "475" and then make your decision.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Yeh, but will the 475 be as good as the 465 in terms of price for performance?

What's bugging me at the moment is that my 5850s don't downclock properly with more than 1 monitor, and doesn't scale as well as I would like in Crysis.

Will the GTX460 downclock properly when using more than 1 monitor?

 

[jonnyboyC]

Yeh, but will the 475 be as good as the 465 in terms of price for performance?

What's bugging me at the moment is that my 5850s don't downclock properly with more than 1 monitor, and doesn't scale as well as I would like in Crysis.

Will the GTX460 downclock properly when using more than 1 monitor?

if i remember correctly 1 card doesn't, but 2 does, (the magic of sli) as for the 475 you could always buy an evga 460 and with their set up program, you could setup to the 475 which would most likely come out before the 90 days allowed to step up, you just send your cards back in and the difference in price, and they send you shiner even newer cards

 

[OvrClkr]

IMO it's not worth it unless you were upgrading from a single 5850. Right now dual 5850's OC'ed are doing better than a single 5970 in most benchmarks. A single 5970 is better than dual 460's TBH..

if we were talking dual 470's then that would be another story..

 

[baracubra]

Why would you want to change over??? I mean if you were going for a pair of 470s or 480 like OvrClkr said, then I'd understand...but as of this moment, your new 460 SLI combo would perform worse than the 5850s you're currently running :S
Altough I can see the temptation if you want to try out 3D gaming, but you didn't mention that as one of the reasons for "downgrading"...

 

[asteldian]

The 460 is a nice little card fitting between the 5830 and 5850, but at 1920 x 1080 you don't want any less power than a 5850, so, while the 460 is Nvidias best Fermi card so far (not the most powerful, just the best design) it is still in an awkward place. You have to buy the card then OC to make it worth having, but if you have 5850s which are fine without OCing, but then you can OC for further performance when the time comes.

The 460 is a good card if you can squeeze your budget beyond a 5770 but cannot afford a 5850, but otherwise I see little reason to have them

 

[rolli59]

Would that not be like flushing money down the toilet. You spent $600 on two cards that have more performance you sell them for $500, you spend $470 (newegg prices) on new cards with 10% less performance. You are still $570 out of pocket.
Don´t forget that HD5850 overclocks well.

 

[jonnyboyC]

i would agree though, 5850 are practically raved about on toms for being so great price performance, and you would be giving up performance really... and in my opinion temps shouldn't really be that much of a concern if they aren't to the point to treating your parts aka why the 480 and the 470 are smack talked so much.

if anything you should just wait till next gen. i'm personally upgrading, from a 275 to 460 sli, and even that i knew i was mostly doing, not because i needed it but because new bells and whistles

 

[sabot00]

If you like wiping you butt with money then sure, otherwise I'm not seeing the point.

 

[OvrClkr]

@ BSOD, what screen do you currently have?

 

[ares1214]

if you can sell the 2 5850s for more than the price of 2 1 gig 460s, then maybe. if you cant, then NO. the 460 by itself has about 90-95% of the performance of the 5850, but it also has better scaling, uses less power, runs cool/cooler, and does well with tesselation. Considering all that, at stock, you shouldnt see much of a loss or increase, unless u play games that favor nvidia. however, the 460 also oc's better, even though the 5850 does just fine. Personally, like i said, wait and see if nvidia fully unlocks fermi 104, see how good of a value it is, then act.

 

[sabot00]

5850 CF is better (by quite a bit), GTX 460's don't over clock as well, they go from stock 675MHz to 825MHz (23%), 5850's go from 725MHz to 925Mhz(27%).

 

[OvrClkr]

if you can sell the 2 5850s for more than the price of 2 1 gig 460s, then maybe. if you cant, then NO. the 460 by itself has about 90-95% of the performance of the 5850, but it also has better scaling, uses less power, runs cool/cooler, and does well with tesselation. Considering all that, at stock, you shouldnt see much of a loss or increase, unless u play games that favor nvidia. however, the 460 also oc's better, even though the 5850 does just fine. Personally, like i said, wait and see if nvidia fully unlocks fermi 104, see how good of a value it is, then act.

im sorry but your post makes no sense at all, first off who is going to pay over 500.00$ for a pair of used 5850's. And second, who said that the 460 has a higher overclocking threshold vs. the 5850? AFAIK certain 5850's can OC past 5870 "stock" speeds, I don't think a heavily overclocked 460 can surpass a 5870 "stock" unless the 460 is under Dice or Ln2 which is besides the point.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

@ BSOD, what screen do you currently have?

1920x1080

5850 CF is better (by quite a bit), GTX 460's don't over clock as well, they go from stock 675MHz to 825MHz (23%), 5850's go from 725MHz to 925Mhz(27%).

Well, I can't overclock my 5850s at the moment unless I reflash the BIOS - mostly due to me running two monitors. For more than 1 monitor, the GPU is constantly running at moderate clocks, whereas idle clocks causes screen flashing - overclocking reverts the speed back to idle clocks.

Does the GTX4x0 series have the same problem?



At the moment, I'm thinking of selling 1 of my 5850s. With 2x5850s I just beat Crysis & Crysis Warhead at UltraHigh for the 2nd time...and a single 5850 handles all my other games just fine. The 5850 is nice, but I'm waiting for the Southern Island refresh or another GTX4x0 bang-for-buck card. The no-idle clock thing for the 5850 really annoys the hell outta me.

 

[OvrClkr]

5850 CF is better (by quite a bit), GTX 460's don't over clock as well, they go from stock 675MHz to 825MHz (23%), 5850's go from 725MHz to 925Mhz(27%).

925Mhz?

or did you mean 1025Mhz (32%)

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv199/OvrClkr/MAX_OC_1025_1300_128v.png

and it can go higher if it wasn't for all this heat..

Clock for clock the GF104 should be faster but when you surpass the 1Ghz mark its a whole nother level..

 

[Bluescreendeath]

im sorry but your post makes no sense at all, first off who is going to pay over 500.00$ for a pair of used 5850's. And second, who said that the 460 has a higher overclocking threshold vs. the 5850? AFAIK certain 5850's can OC past 5870 "stock" speeds, I don't think a heavily overclocked 460 can surpass a 5870 "stock" unless the 460 is under Dice or Ln2 which is besides the point.

I can get $480 out of my 5850s, or 240 each. I have the XFX version, and used XFX cards sell nicely due to their transferable warranty.


Mainly, I was looking at the Crysis benchmarks, and it showed that the GTX460 SLi scales way better than the 58x0 series in Xfire. Two GTX460s perform almost equal to a 2x5850 in average fps, and performs between 2x5850 and 2x5870 in terms of minimum fps.


At this point, I'm thinking of just selling 1 5850 and seeing if anything new comes out...

 

[AMW1011]

Dual GTX 460s are about on par with dual 5850s at stock. I would say that they are basically the same. The GTX 460 may overclock slightly better since they consistently go over 900 MHz on the core with voltage, and its a 50/50 if a 5850 can get to 1000MHz. I would have to say that the dual GTX 460s OC'd heavily would be slightly better than dual 5850s OC'd heavily, but not by too much. Also, you wont be able to make up any money by trading out, since you can only get about $450 for 2 used 5850s, and dual GTX 460s cost about that as well.

Just stick with the 5850s, its not worth the time. Also crossfire scaling may get better in time, so the 5850s might gain the edge.

 

[sabot00]

925Mhz?

or did you mean 1025Mhz

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv199/OvrClkr/MAX_OC_1025_1300_128v.png

and it can go higher if it wasn't for all this heat..

Most people get 900-950MHz on stock voltages, so I chose the middle.

 

[AMW1011]

925Mhz?

or did you mean 1025Mhz

http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv199/OvrClkr/MAX_OC_1025_1300_128v.png

and it can go higher if it wasn't for all this heat..

Yes we know your in-love with your 5850 and you get abnormally high clocks on the core. The GTX 460 can hit about 925-950 MHz with some luck and voltage, and probably higher with some non-reference parts like your 5850. That is still about a 40% OC with both. The GTX 4xx architecture as seems to gain more from overclocking, though I haven't been able to tell if that remains true with the G104 parts.

 

[ares1214]

5850 CF is better (by quite a bit), GTX 460's don't over clock as well, they go from stock 675MHz to 825MHz (23%), 5850's go from 725MHz to 925Mhz(27%).

no true. the gtx 460 scales extremely well and a single 460 only loses to a 5850 by about 5-10%:

there you see the 460 sli overall in a tie with the 5970. 2 5850s in xfire also overall tie a 5970:

the 2 460s should be very close to 2 5850s, id say + or - 5% depending on the game. and almost all reports have the 460 getting atleast 850 MHz, making it 26%. and heres a comparison:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5850-review-crossfire/21

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/18

the 460 oc's just as high or higher.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Ok, now an important question - does idle clocks for the GTX4x0 series cause screen flashing for multiple monitors, causing the card to have to run in moderate load clocks at all times?

This happens for the 5850s, and is really annoying...

Remember, this dual monitor screen flashing issue is what prevents me from overclocking at all. Even a small OC causes my other monitor to flash at a seizure-causing rate.

 

[jonnyboyC]

this is honestly becoming an nvidia camp vs ati camp pretty quick, if you utterly can't stand the no idle, and don't mind a small lose in performance go ahead and get the 460 sli, otherwise just wait, for the next generation or at least until southern island or fully fledged gf 104 or gf100's come out