many 5850 owners dont complain because they are not as critical as me, if i dont get value for money i would complain. designed to do basic dx11? for 250 quid? 57xx had dx11 support, they surely knew about the problems of the chip but still release a poor dx11 card just cos nvidia didnt have one at that time in the market. It was only later till nvidia showed them up. Yes i made the wrong choice
shau, you are comparing apples to oranges. HD5850/5870 were released more than a half year before GTX460. Why don't you compare HD5950 to GTX460 ? Oh wait, that doesn't fit your logic. Simply put, stop comparing HD5xxx generation to GTX4xx generation. Compare HD6xxx to GTX5xx, that is a fair comparison. HD5xxx was the first DX11 card, it is hard to find the good balance between what developers will want to use and what do you expect the developers will use. If you miss the expected feature set, your card will be subpar in some areas. ATI expected some level of DX11 tesselation use, but it was used more than expected => lower tesellation performance. You can find similar problems through whole history of the cards - the first ones to implement some feature are not every time right.
Well, I reckon sometimes the footie fans make more sense - stick the mast in the ground & stand by it. if folk choose to see nvidia and amd/ati as teams in a league of two, their choice. but you can't buy a season ticket for one then go around asking folk if you made the right decision when halfway through the season you're on the second page.....
you know what pisses me off? i bought an 8800 gt when it first came out...$290. and it couldnt play crysis at 75 fps...less than a 9 months later, out comes the gtx 260...wth was nvidia thinking, releasing a card that couldn't handle dx10 features...then turning around and releasing a card that had 50%+ more performance at the same price that I paid for a card less than a year ago!! /sarcasm
In a same way 8800GT lasted for 3 years, so will HD5850. Who cares if it doesn't benchmark as high in tesselation as GTX560. Do you play benchmarks or games ? And i wonder what "blew your mind away" with GTX570, i switched from stock HD5870 to GTX570 for noise reasons and the difference is minimal, if any.
Both companys make excellent cards. There are pro's and con's to both same as there are with every single GPU released from both. The AMD drivers arn't as bad as people make out. And the Nvidia ones arn't as good as people make out. Physx is over-rated. Havok seems the better option and that works on both AMD and Nvidia. AMD cards use much less power, Nvidia use much more for the same amount of performance. AMD cards suffer when AA is applied, but unless you are pushing the max the card is capable of, losing a few frames really does not matter at all. Nvidia is the only choice if you want to fold. Nvidia has Cuda. AMD has eyefinity. I missed some things out, so sue me. I'm tired. You (should) get the idea. Neither side is bad. And both are far from being perfect. I won't comment on your comparisons as others have done that already. But you do realise both company release new cards every few months right? Your juicy new card won't be new for long. Give it a few months and that 570 you mentioned will be old hat.
So basically you're ranting because you made a poor choice when buying a GPU, and now because of your poor choice you're saying that's ATI's fault? Moral of the story: do your research next time. If you had a choice between a GTX 460 and a 5850 for those prices, I have no idea why you would choose the 5850. Yes, the 5850 does struggle with DX11 features, but that's because it was a first generation DX11 card, so that's to be expected and was (I thought) common knowledge. The reason your comparison is invalid is because you're comparing it to a revised and refined Fermi GPU which was released much later than the 5850. I can only speak from my own experiences, but overall I'm happier with my 6870 than I was with my GTX 460. Granted, the CCC isn't as good as the Nvidia control panel and is lacking some useful features, but so far I haven't had any problems with the drivers at all.
I've never had an ATI card, but that's not particularly because I'm biased towards green, its because I tend to go for a big single GPU and stick it out for a few years and since nvidia tend to produce the best single GPU cards thats where I end up. But nvidia are far from perfect, almost every card I've ever owned has been RMAed at least once 6600gt(2), 7800GTX(2), 8800GTX(1), 8800GT, GTX280 (1) and I'm having problems with it now..... The fact is though that the drivers are good software is decent, Physx is nice but not essential. You pick the lesser of two evils generally and when upgrade time comes round i always seem to end up plumping for nvidia again. All I want is a card that never grows old, stays at 30c come rain or shine and never breaks. I'm sure when larrabie finally comes round I'll have it
Heh. I don't know how the OP didn't think this would end up as a strongly felt debate. For the record, I've always hated the 'apples and oranges' comparison as I prefer apples . Both companies have had their ups and downs. For example, when the 8800 Nvidia series was released, ATI were playing catch up for two generations of GPU. IIRC, it took the 3870X2 to finally topple the 8800 GTX. Later on, ATI swung back in with the 5000 series and Nvidia couldn't counter it for a few months. I will say one thing though: I wholeheartedly disapprove of Nvidia's disabling of PhysX when an ATI/AMD GPU is present. As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the biggest d*ck moves in computing history and the idiot who came up with this 'brainwave' should be shot. Finally, in my experience, I find that ATI/AMD card owners tend to be more aggressive about protecting their card's reputation...
I like Nvidia cards, the irony though is that whenever I went shopping for a card, AMD/ATI seemed to be the better deal. From the HD4850 to the HD6850, it outperformed the GTX460 stock, and while the GTX460 was OC'able it was just simply too hot for my tastes. It was quite sad since I really wanted to grab a GTX460.
AMD and Nvidia have exchanged pretty fierce blows in the last 16 months. All I have to say is, if you bought anywhere near the high end and now find yourself holdling a card consuming s(*t loads of power has lost half it's value + perfomance rank: sucks to be you.
What amazes me is the OP thinking the 5850 is a bad card when at the time, it was great and pissed all over nvidia. Still it is good that he's confirming my already held snobby views on people who can't read and write proper English.
most people are a bit biased so ill put a neutral point of view across owned 5870 cf now own 580 sli 5870 cf was fun times but every time the drivers were updated was roulete wheel will it work wont it work and you had to go through that for nearly every major game release. Performance was outstanding once you got it going. AMD/ATI drivers have always been a bit dodgy things are now improving with the latest series but i wouldnt be shocked to see a return to the bad old days. 580 sli has great drivers and great performance but at a cost of both noise and money i didnt get alot of change from £850. And once you start pushing both cards they are noisy no matter what people think. 3d stuff is just gimics as is eyeinfinity till you can buy 3 moniters with no bars on it looks awful and not sure how people play it like that great on maybe some strat game when you can have the map displayed on another screen. not sure id want to race like that in dirt 2 or f1 2010
The ridiculous thing is the HD5850 is still a great card even today. DX11 features are few and far between and when they are used it is more for the sake of ticking a box on a spec sheet than for any real benefit. Barring outliers it is faster than the GTX460 either when both are stock or both are overclocked (assuming the HD5850 had voltage control).
well at that time the market was different, there was no competitor to the 5850 from nvidia, how did it piss over nvidia? Atleast nvidia took their time to release a proper dx11 card and not a dud. Put your constructive and relevant opinions across but don't be a personal hater. This is internet talk, its funny cos I'm pretty sure my English and education level is higher than yours.
xaser that is ridiculous, you go by price performance, on amazon toxic edition is still 200?? and sapphire vaporx is 160. Anyone buying that would be crazy as at that kind of money, there are much much much better options. Retailers are feeling the pain as they bought a whole load of stock and dont know how to get rid of it. From a card that got outdated very quickly whilst others havent. sapphire toxic 5850 here for 150, any takers?
