Hello and welcome! I'm about to upgrade from a 4850 to a 5850 and I'm clueless on which brand I should go for. Some differ in price by a rather large amount which adds to my despair. So far I've been looking at these 2...but I've really got no clue. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/201510 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/222056 Could someone offer an opinion in the price and performance of said card or recommend a better buy? Thanking you kindly, GAI. PS. First post here - Hai
Hello! Half the fun of buying the card is a little research in the name of PC gaming! Out of those two, if it were my money I'd go for the XFX. The Sapphire is a 2GB card but at the resolutions you'll be playing I doubt the extra gig would be very beneficial if at all! Also i can imagine it wouldn't be that hard to overclock the XFX to the same performance as the Sapphire on the core. Also if it were me, I'd be looking to buy this card from dabs.com, they have it for £216.98 with free delivery. Also through quidco.com you can get a few pounds cashback. Worthy of mention is dabs customer service which in my experience is second to none. For instance I was unhappy with my Palit GTX 460 and under the distance selling regulations as I hadn't exceeded ownership of the card by 7 working days it can be returned (at your own expense mind). You can do this return should you feel unhappy about your purchase all through the dabs.com website. It was a life saver for me when I made the mistake of buying that Palit card.
Performance will be quite similar, depending on what resolution you play on of course. Get a Sapphire Vapor-X/Toxic - slightly more expensive but run cooler and quieter. If you aren't playing on massive screen with a very high resolution, you could get away with a 1gb version. *Edit* Oh, hai!
I've got a powercolour pcs+ which is pre overclocked and really quiet and from memory not that expensive. 1gb and runs my benq 2222hdl monitor great!
I've never been sure about those down-and-outwards coolers on graphics cards, I like rear-facing ones more because I don't like the idea of all that 70'C air being blown back into my case. They perform better on tests for cooling the actual card, but I wonder what they do to your ambient temperature...
£290 for a HD5850? Yeah... No. Out of those two, get the XFX. For that money you could almost get a HD5870 instead and it just isn't right.
The Asus HD5850, 3 year warranty and ability to voltage tweak, can be got for ?204.99, which can also be overclocked to 5870 speeds and beyond quite easily... ________ Find headshop
