Upgrade the 5850 with the gtx 470 or go for the gtx 570?

[BeCoolBro]

First,here are my specs:
Case:CM 690
CPU:i5 750 @ stock
Mobo:asus p7p55d
RAM:4GB DDR3 1600MHZ
GPU:Sapphire 5850
PSU:Corsair tx 750w
My 5850 has started showing instabilities so since the 69xx series is going to be released soon and the warranty hasn't expired yet,I'm thinking of rmaing it and then selling the replacement 5850.One possibility would be to wait until the 6950 is released and then choose between it and the gtx 570 according to their performance.I'm not sure though if I need all the rendering power of the gtx 570.I game at 1920x1080 and the 5850 can pretty much max any game at 30 fps.A gtx 470 should be a little bit faster and as a result should also max all the games at 30-40 fps.It isn't much of an upgrade,but it would be cheaper in case I don't get a replacement.

In case you want details about the instabilities,the driver resets and the display changes to grey or red-ish colours a few times.I can even hear the fan speeding up a bit in the process.I'm not sure what is causing these as they happen at stock frequencies.

 

[wa1]

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=426&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=6
Yes, it's worth, sell your replacement HD5850 and get GTX570.

 

[Maziar]

Well if you can play every game maxed out,then why upgrade ? IMO,upgrade something when you really don't get the performance you need, not just only because something faster is available.
Anyway,if you still want to upgrade,then GTX 570 will give you a good boost in performance.

 

[im_thelumberjack]

The 570 gtx is a much better card. It has performance comparable to a 480 gtx plus it runs much cooler, and draws less power.

 

[BeCoolBro]

Well if you can play every game maxed out,then why upgrade ? IMO,upgrade something when you really don't get the performance you need, not just only because something faster is available.
Anyway,if you still want to upgrade,then GTX 570 will give you a good boost in performance.

As I mentioned,instabilities.I don't see it lasting for more than a month or two.If it keeps going strong though,I could get another 5850 to xfire.What about that?I can find some at a very low price,200 euros for an msi twin frozr edition to be specific.Finally before anyone suggests overclocking,I think that caused the instabilities in the first place.Although it could also be the low voltage of the powerplay feature.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

if you have the ability to use crossfire, another 5850 would be the best bang for buck option, they are quite cheap now. so should rma the card still.

 

[Maziar]

+1^
Another 5850 will give you a decent performance boost

 

[phenom90]

if you don't mind the higher power consumption of nvidia cards i would suggest you taking the gtx 570 because i don't know if your mobo only has one pcie x16 or two because my p7p55d only has one and another at x4 speed... be sure to check out your mobo compatibility before going crossfire route because if your second pcie slot is running at x4 speed it can hurt your crossfire performance...

 

[BeCoolBro]

if you have the ability to use crossfire, another 5850 would be the best bang for buck option, they are quite cheap now. so should rma the card still.

It seems I can't rma the card after all.It has some issues in 2d(I suspect Powerplay is to blame) but it can pass furmark and 3dmark 11 just fine.My warranty ends in a couple of weeks so I hope it won't start having problems in 3d after that.Also about my x4 slot,having seen benchmarks with 2 gtx 480s in sli on x4 x4 not having a performance drop and expecting a 5% drop in performance in a worst case scenario I think I'm sold on the second 5850.
I have another question though.If I get a new card and set that as the primary card and the one I currently have as secondary,would the primary only handle 2d or both?

 

[jerreece]

Going from ATI 5850 to GTX 470 would be a waste of money. From an ATI 5850 to a GTX 570, might be worth doing.

But quite frankly, at 1920x1080 your ATI 5850 should be doing perfectly fine. And 30FPS sounds a bit low. I game at the same resolution with my GTX 470 and can do 60FPS with most of what I play.

What games are you playing?

Doing Crossfire or SLI with x8 / x8 slots is perfectly acceptable. Not sure if I'd want to go x4 / x4 though.

 

[BeCoolBro]

Going from ATI 5850 to GTX 470 would be a waste of money. From an ATI 5850 to a GTX 570, might be worth doing.

But quite frankly, at 1920x1080 your ATI 5850 should be doing perfectly fine. And 30FPS sounds a bit low. I game at the same resolution with my GTX 470 and can do 60FPS with most of what I play.

What games are you playing?

Doing Crossfire or SLI with x8 / x8 slots is perfectly acceptable. Not sure if I'd want to go x4 / x4 though.

Maxing means 4/8xaa/16xaf all ultra settings.It depends on the game.On BC2 I get 50-60 fps with drops to 20(explosions or other intense events) with 4xaa and everything maxed.Metro 2033 on the other hand is a different story.
About crossfire in x4/x4,doesn't this prove that it barely affects framerates?Anyway you think about it,I will still get more performance than the gtx 570.And at a cheaper price.
Finally my issues aren't as I descrbed them earlier.The thing is,I had overclocked the card,though mildly and then stressed it with 3dmark11.The overclock was far from stable and I had several ccc crashes but I didn't get a bsod as I usually get when I have an unstable oc.So I kept getting crashes..After a reboot,everything was fine and to make sure of it,I ran furmark,msi kombustor,3dmark 11 and a couple of games.No crash occured so I beleve it's fine.
I will wait for the amd 69xx series to see its performance and pricing.If the 5950 reaches or surpasses 5970 performance at the 570's price range, I'll get that.If it doesn't I'll get the second 5850.

 

[Embra]

HD 5850 Crossfire comparison:


HD 5850 vs. GTX480

 

[jerreece]

According to this Tomshardware article from August 2010, testing a SINGLE GTX 480 you can expect approximately 20% overall performance loss from PCI-E x16 to x4 setup.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696-9.html

This article doesn't test an SLI or Crossfire loss @ x4 / x4 though. Just the loss from a single card. Only articles I can find that touch on the Crossfire or SLI x4 setup are from the GTX 8000 series age. So they're a bit outdated. Now, will a Crossfire 5850 still perform better than your single 5850? Yes. But even now your single 5850 does a pretty stand up job with your games anyhow. So any improvement over what you have is basically butter.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

you would still get a considerable fps boost using xfire with pcie 4x, i wouldnt say you would lose that much performance http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html heres an article comparing 5870's at different pcie speeds. since the 5850 would use slightly less bandwidth, i dont think you will see much drop from using the 4x slot. 5% at worst. Since youll be running xfire and 1 of the 2 cards is at 16x, this may translate to less than 5% loss, if any, from using a 4x slot.

 

[ionut19]

I don't understand why didn't they made these P55 boards in the way that when the second PCI-E slot is occupied the bandwidth is reduced to 8x on first and second. Why does it have to be the second one at 4x?? I just hate that thing.

The 5850 would probably be a better choice. I like single cards solutions best because of less complications but here is your choice.

 

[Embra]

If your one to replace your gpu once a year, I would get a second hd 5850.

 

[BeCoolBro]

According to this Tomshardware article from August 2010, testing a SINGLE GTX 480 you can expect approximately 20% overall performance loss from PCI-E x16 to x4 setup.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696-9.html

This article doesn't test an SLI or Crossfire loss @ x4 / x4 though. Just the loss from a single card. Only articles I can find that touch on the Crossfire or SLI x4 setup are from the GTX 8000 series age. So they're a bit outdated. Now, will a Crossfire 5850 still perform better than your single 5850? Yes. But even now your single 5850 does a pretty stand up job with your games anyhow. So any improvement over what you have is basically butter.

Did you read the whole article?If you look at the benches of less demanding games,there is a big loss,but in more demanding games like metro and crysis there is a loss of 1-3 fps between the different slots.Am I wrong?
Did I forget to link the article?In this article there is very little loss from the x4 slot,although that is 2560x1600 and not 1920x1080.I'd get a bit more performance than going to a single gtx 570.
At Malmental,if the gtx 570 is faster than the 5950 at the same price or a bit higher.Of course I'll go Nvidia for physx.

 

[BeCoolBro]

no doubt..
even a clocked GTX470..

Thanks everyone,now I wish the button for best answer would appear so I can close this thread.I'll star another one with the launch of the 69xx series to discuss the best bang for buck choice.My choice right now would be the second 5850 or if I can get at least 150 euros from selling the 5850,the gtx 570.