Sapphire are launching a new 5850 according to Hexus..... I'm having real trouble seeing the point of these, unless they are extremely competitively priced. Edit: just found them online @ Pixmania for £98 - which represents great value for money for a card faster than a 460GTX on BFBC2
Neoseeker says, "The HD 5850 on the other hand performed exceptionally well across the board and was able to go head-to-head with higher priced Barts based graphics cards in many of our benchmarks. This makes this model an exceptional value for the money. The HD 5850 Xtreme also showed excellent overclocked scaling in most games and at times it was able to compete with graphics cards well out of it's price range such as the GTX 560 Ti and HD 6950. Of the two Xtreme series graphics cards, this one the one we liked the most and with the performance and price it comes easily recommended. Another aspect of the Xtreme series that was a step above most graphics cards in this price segment was the cooling solution. In our testing the HD 5830 and HD 5850 Xtreme offered excellent thermal performance regardless of the type of use. Both cards during our benchmarks maxed out in the mid-60°C range at load, and when idle the graphics processor maintained a temperature near 30°C. The included fans on the Xtreme series graphics cards were also very quiet and even during the most demanding use, the cards managed to maintain a very low acoustics level." Sounds like an absolute bargain at £100
Another review here, the performance of that £100 5850 xtreme is quite astounding for the price and comes as quite a shock to a 6870 owner! I had to check the difference between the cypress and barts core after reading that, apparently my £100 extra gets me 3D. Yay.
We have one of these in our HTPC (when it cost just over £200), and I can confirm that it is a great card.
I just saw a review of this and was very impressed by the price/performance of the 5850. What sticks out for me as that aswell as being exceptionally good value they are also offering you the renowned Vapor-X cooler aswell, on top of outperforming pretty much every other card in its price range. This would be an exceptional deal for people who already own one 5850. Crossfired 5850's should outperform a 580 in most instances and only costs £200 (£100 if upgrading from a single 5850). Thumbs up to Sapphire.
Do you guys reckon it would be worth me getting another 5850 then? I've never dabbled in multi gpus before and heard you're very driver dependent? For £100 though I'm thinking it might be worth a pop?
Has anyone confirmed you can crossfire a 5850 Xtreme with a normal 5850, apparently the new xtreme uses a different board layout?
Oh right maybe I should look into that then Well I can't really find anything so if anyone has any information please share it! Cheers. EDIT: I've seen a website where they have a 5850 and a 5870 in crossfire. If this works then does it follow that two slightly different 5850s would work?
I shouldn't think a board layout will make any difference, from what I hear, if you Crossfire an extreme edition with a normal edition, though both cards will run at the slower cards speeds. Massive amount of performance, your right!
Quite a lot of people seem to be having problem with this card: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18260756 Also, this 5850 has already been confirm as poor overclocker, since you can't voltage-tweak it...just like the other non-reference cards. With that said, if we overlook the possible problems and poor overclocking potential, it is still a cracking card at around £100, considering it is faster than GTX460 768MB 1GB/ 6850 that are priced at around £120~£150.
Ok cool cheers guys. One more quick question do you think my 650w psu will be fine with adding a second 5850? My hardware is in my sig, slight overclock on the i7 but only at 3ghz (I am rubbish at overclocking).
Yes, a 650w will be fine for 2 x 5850's. Could you run some before/after benchies for us when you get it set up!? I'd love to see the kind of performance you'll get.
Overclockersclub used trixx to reach 1ghz on these. unfortunately it looks like the 5850 has only a two heatpipe cooler and the 5830 a three.
Don't know how they managed, but lots of users have tried using Trixx and it ain't helping them at all on pushing overclock. Hell, quite a few people are struggling to get the card working properly without issue on stock clock...I have to wonder about the quality of these cores...
Is it just me or is 'a lot of people' sctually 'ginnyfizz' constantly posting how he had to rma his card? There are more posts in that thread saying how happy they are with the performance and a few others saying it doesn't overclock too well. Not exactly damning evidence of a poor card.
Overclock ain't gonna go very far on stock voltage, and I believe the card is confirmed to have no voltage tweak option. Also see this: http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...0-hd5850-xtreme-edition-review-crossfirex/19/ Overclock only hitting 800MHz range, when reference 5850 or 5850 with voltage tweak can hit as high as 900MHz+.
