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What Card to get 470 or 5850 ??

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Right guys, i am after a new card for gaming, now i have narrowed it down to these 2...

now i know the 5850 overclocks well to 5870 speeds and will match a 5870, but what are the 470's like at overclocking ? will that beat a 5870 also ?

Any help would be great.
 
Soldato
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Check out some benchmarks on the web.

I personally do not comapre the 5850 and the gtx 470, as they are not the same price.

5850 = £230

gtx 470 = 300

If your considering a gtx 470, then the 5870 is in your price bracket.

Over all, the 5870 is most probably the better card.

The waters are a bit more muddy than this however.

From what iv seen from benchmarks, the 470 performs similarly to a 5850, but has someyimes high minimums in games than a 5870, which is important.

But from a raw performance point of view, the 5870 beats it hands down.

Add the better thermals and power usage and the 5870 is the clear winner.
 
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http://www.guru3d.com/article/overclocking-geforce-gtx-470-with-extra-gpu-voltage/1

"Much like the GTX 480 OC review, please make no mistake, what we have shown you here today is not really something we can recommend with the generic (reference based air-cooled) GeForce GTX 470 unless you want to fool and play around a little of course.

To compensate the additional voltage and thus additional heat coming from the GPU you'll need to increase the fan rotation of the graphics card which on its end increases the noise levels of the cooler coming from already loud to really unheard proportions. This article serves merely of an indication what the GeForce GTX 470 has in store for overclocking potential.

The above linky from Guru 3d may help in the overclocking of the GTX470.

Might wanna look at a 3rd party GTX470 with better cooling ie. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-035-ZT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1810 due to the above comments.

But cost becomes a big factor then compared to a 5850!

:D
 
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What motherboard? if you have an sli or crossfire board the decision is far easier to make. Both are good cards though! From a price/performance perspective the 5850 beats out the 470 by a fair margin but if you have an SLI mobo and are looking to that in the future then the 470 does pretty well in SLI by all accounts and is a better suited to your current kit.

Do you have any requirements for CUDA or are you an advocate of Physix? All things to consider when making that all important purchasing decision.

Personally I would go 5850 as it is unmatched for price/performance, this is me though and not everybody has the same criteria when buying.
 
Soldato
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Right guys, i am after a new card for gaming, now i have narrowed it down to these 2...

now i know the 5850 overclocks well to 5870 speeds and will match a 5870, but what are the 470's like at overclocking ? will that beat a 5870 also ?

Any help would be great.


The first reference cards used to, maybe not the same results with the ones you can buy now, they haven't the same hardware, Asus and Msi excluded.
 
Soldato
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I was suprised at how little amount of performance I lost by going x8 XF 5770.

The Xfire 5770's at 8x sometimes performed better in benchies than my 1st Rig when it was 1 x 5870 at x16???? :confused:

Crossfire 5770's beat a single 5870 in a quite a few games and saved me money that went towards an ssd. You don't lose any noticable performance at x8.
To the op if you are only looking for a single card you can't go wrong with a 5850.
 
Soldato
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Well according to the article :

"The GeForce GTX 470 vs. Radeon HD 5850 comparison can be summed up much more easily. The Radeon HD 5850 was without a doubt the superior performer in our testing, washing away the GeForce GTX 470 in all but two games. Even when the GeForce GTX 470 hit the lead when playing Metro 2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat it was by a small 1-2 fps margin on average. "

The choice is easy. Get the faster and yet cheaper 5850.

I wouldnt pay too much attention however to just one set of benchmarks. I based my assumptions after looking at loads of benchmarks, and my summary is that the 470 performs inbetween the 5850 and the 5870 but can some times have slightly higher minimums than the 5870.

Honestly you cant go wrong with the 5850. It was voted the best card of 2009, and not much has changed since then.

Plus AMD/ATI are way more efficient with power and temperatures, so unless you want physx, the choice is easy.

On top of that what I want to know, is, whats the point in running physx on a 470 anyway, when it already struggles with framrates, what will happen to fps when you add physx as well?!
 
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^ however anyone who isn't an ati fanboy will say to spend the extra few quid for a 470 because a 470 can easily beat a 480 when overclocked and at stock beats the 5850 by a good margin when high levels of AA and/or DX11 is involved at stock clocks and beats the 5870 most of the time when it comes to minimum fps.

only exceptions are BC2 and L4D, one of which is an AMD game anyway

info from anandtech which most people will agree with me is the least biased tech review site
 
Soldato
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^ however anyone who isn't an ati fanboy will say to spend the extra few quid for a 470 because a 470 can easily beat a 480 when overclocked and at stock beats the 5850 by a good margin when high levels of AA and/or DX11 is involved at stock clocks and beats the 5870 most of the time when it comes to minimum fps.

only exceptions are BC2 and L4D, one of which is an AMD game anyway

info from anandtech which most people will agree with me is the least biased tech review site

Your comment about clocking the 470 is nonsense, sorry. If a buyer had that in mind he would also know that he can clock the 5850 too and much further on it's stock cooler than a 470 can.

The only reason to get a 470 over a 5850 would be either brand loyalty or because you value having Cuda and Physx features and are happy to pay the extra for it.
 
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Your comment about clocking the 470 is nonsense, sorry. If a buyer had that in mind he would also know that he can clock the 5850 too and much further on it's stock cooler than a 470 can.

The only reason to get a 470 over a 5850 would be either brand loyalty or because you value having Cuda and Physx features and are happy to pay the extra for it.

no, I have a 5770 and am getting a 470 over a 5850 despite costing me an extra £80 because I'm going to WC it, and 4xx have far larger increase in performance per extra MHz than 58xx.

a 770MHz 470 or 480 will wipe the floor with any 5870, and they're far better when it comes to minimum fps anyway
 
Soldato
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Water cooling a fermi is the way forward for sure, that's a different matter. I agree that they scale well with clocking but I still don't think you will get £80 worth of fps out of a 470, especially considering that you could run a water cooled 5850 at 1ghz core (possibly higher) no problem. Horses for courses though.
 
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5850 for me. HW91 makes some good points, buy if you buy asus or msi reference 5850, more often than not you can turn it into something practically indistinguishable from a 5870 by moving two bars. This to me is clearly the best option.

And it will go up to a 1000 where it seems to be quite happy a lot of times- whack a cooler like the zalman vf3000 on, it still costs a total less then the 470, and it is then silent.

Throughout this the thermals remain quite acceptable. Clocking a 470 as hard would mean a fair amount of noise.
 
Soldato
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no, I have a 5770 and am getting a 470 over a 5850 despite costing me an extra £80 because I'm going to WC it, and 4xx have far larger increase in performance per extra MHz than 58xx.

a 770MHz 470 or 480 will wipe the floor with any 5870, and they're far better when it comes to minimum fps anyway


This is besides the point, however, a gtx 470 is £300 roughly and how much more for the water cooling stuff?

Come one, it seems far better price performance to go down the amd route.

Why not just get a 5870 (which at stock is better than the 470) and water cool that? Even better scrap all this water cooling crap, spend the money on a 480 or a 5970.

Why buy something, over priced, and then spend more money on yet more gear, when you could probably get the same performance out the box, with a better gpu?

Also, uys, one thing to consider is that gpu's expire very very quickly, in six months, your top of the line gpu is old tech, and in two years perfornamce and dx version has made shifts, so in my eyes its all about getting the best for your money, with an one on the future as well.

I can afford to buy 2 or more 480's or 5970 and cross/sli em with the best core i7 cpu, but is it worth it, or needed?

In two years your rig, especially the gpu is obsolete. This is by design, all parties are to blame, microsoft, nvidia and amd.

So in my eyes, get the best bang for your buck.

dont bother with water cooling etc etc etc, save the money and just upgrade it when the time comes.

Get a 5850 now, and then get a 7850 in two years (or the nvidia equivalent)

I think you understand what im trying to say.

Actually this is why some many have turned away from pc gaming.

The hard ware progresses too quickly, where as with consoles, you just upgrade your console ever 3-4 years when the latest xbox or playstation gets released.

Job done. (By the way im a pc gamer)!
 
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