• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

2 x 5850 or 5970?

Associate
Joined
15 Mar 2009
Posts
6
Hi

Im have to buy a new gfx card, the problem is that i cant decide if its going to be 2 x 5850 or 5970.

All the 5970´s still have the stock cooling but less power use maybe?

If its the 5850´s it is going to be one of these:

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 5850 PCS+ Pros: two free games and good price Cons: Dont realy know there support and the review i read said they use cheap components.

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Vapor-X 1024MB Pros: I have 5770 Vapor-x right now, it runs great, and good support Cons: Price is higher and the clock is lower than the Powercolor PCS+

GIGABYTE RADEON HD5850 OC UDV 1GB Pros: It have there Ultra Durable tech, same as my UD5 Motherboard Cons: overclockers.co.uk dont have it :(

The main use is for Gaming in 1920x1080, but im a student so they have to be able to play games the next 2 or 3 years!

My computer : Gigabyte UD5 motherboard, I7 920, 12gb OCZ Reaper, Creative x-fi 7,1 soundcard, 120GB kingston SSD and 3 640GB WD Black HDs

Have any of you guys had the same choise to make as me or any wisdom to share with me?

Ekstra note : My motherboard have 3 pci slots, and with the two 5850´s they will all be used and one of the cards will only have x8 mode, will this make it slower?
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
2 Nov 2006
Posts
1,636
Location
Sheffield
There was an article last week about crossfire 5850 vs the 480 on the unlinkable site rhyming with Nexus. They have the 5970 in all the results, so answers your question quite well.

Noise = fractionally higher for 2x5850 [but only for boards with no gap between the 2 cards in crossfire].

Performance = fractionally higher for the 2x5850, strangely enough.
Power usage = Fractionally less for 2x5850
Cost = £50+ less.

From other sites, we know that the performance loss on a P55 board is only 2% from that on an X58.
 
Associate
Joined
22 Jul 2007
Posts
1,396
Location
nottingham
One other thing to think about that i didn't is when i added a second card for xfire i couldnt use my xfi sound card anymore as it will no longer fit.Maybe your ud5 mobo has more room than my ud3 so do check on that.
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Feb 2006
Posts
4,066
Location
London
If you have the space i'd get 2 of the pcs 5850's and sell the games you don't need to make it even cheaper. The cooler seems pretty good and people are getting decent overclocks on them.
 
Back
Top Bottom