6850 or 5850?

[paradigmGT]

I have the option of getting either a 6850 or 5850 used from a local seller. 6850 (MSI) is $70, 5850 (Sapphire) is $50. Would I notice much of a performance difference between them in gaming? My PSU is a corsair CX430 (430w 80+) unit, and my rig is an old Dell core2duo Q6600.

I hear the 5850 is more power hungry which concerns me as my PSU is only good for 430w.

 

[stickmansam]

The 6850 is slightly more powerful but would widen it's lead over the 5850 in Tessellation/DX11

Your PSU should be able to handle either of these cards

 

[iam2thecrowe]

the 6850 is better for dx11 games, which most are now. the 5850 is also quite a bit older and older cards are likely to have problems sooner.

 

[wdmfiber]

This is when ATI/AMD did a bit of "slight of hand"/confusing name change (for marketing). In terms of gigaflops the 5850 is about 40% more powerful (2088 vs. 1488), than a 6850. Flops aren't everything, but that's a considerable difference(40%). Even Tom's GPU Hierarchy Chart ranks the 5850 one tier higher (that refects real world frame rates). And both are DirectX 11 cards and built on the 40nm fab process.

By today's naming the 5850 would have been called the 5950. A number that wasn't used back then. And 5970 was the dual GPU card, not 5990.

Some cards were a direct "carry over".
Example: the 5770 > 6770 (you can also crossfire them).

A 5850 likely would be several months older thou (depending on production date). As it was released in late 2009, over a year before the 6850. Anyway, the 6950 was the sucessor to 5850. Since it was built on the same fabrication process, AMD had to use a "sledgehammer" approach to make it graphically more powerful... it uses more electricty (200 watts vs. 151).

 

[paradigmGT]

So I should see much better performance out of the 5850 then? Basically a higher performing, overall better card for less money?

 

[stickmansam]

*self faceplam* Can't beleive I missed that

 

[wdmfiber]

*self faceplam* Can't beleive I missed that

Even the best fall down sometimes.
No worries.

 

[hasappra]

5850 is more powerful than 6850 in most titles but some of them are older than 6850, if by any chance the sapphire 5850 is Sapphire HD5850 Xtreme, that is not an older card, it was released in 2011 and the last of its generation before wiped out by 6000 series . However if you plan to do Crossfire ... u must choose 6850 because they have better scaling than 5850. One 5850 is faster than 6850 but many cases show that two 6850s is faster than two 5850s especially on directx 11 titles.
This is comparison from anandtech:
single GPU: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/512?vs=539
CF: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/303?vs=302