Widescreen Gaming Forum

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

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.

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

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

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.

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.

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.

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