Wow! That is fast! I still think its an amazing deal. People have been very positive about its silence too. I know if I had £100 to spend on a GPU what I'd be buying.
Damn, seems I massively underistimated the 5850. /Ontopic The overclocking results seem a bit dissapointing to be honest. The 5850's usually overclock like a dream. Is it purely down to locked voltages or could it possibly that these one didn't bin very well - possibly hence the re-release and low prices. Edit: Ninja'd by Parge, had the reply open while playing BC2, next time I will get there first!
To be honest, I'd be more worried about any potentially cheaper components used to bring the price down.
IIRC any HD5850 that didn't have voltage control clocked relatively poorly compared to ones that did have it. I *think* the original reference design models could be "unlocked" to gain access to the voltage tweak feature but ones that ran a custom PCB (and thus a different voltage regulator) were not capable of this unless otherwise stated.
Of the revision two cards the only one I know for sure that can not be voltage unlocked using trixx is the XFX egg cooler. Many of the revision two cards also used the same coolers and PCBs on 5870s so you know they can handle higher voltages and clock speeds. Trixx has been around on and off since about 2003; I'm not sure which versions people are trying to be honest. Sapphire states trixx does support voltage control.
TBH, I couldn't care less about its overclocking prowess (or lack of) - the fact is that it is a great little (well, not so little - as big as my 580, in fact..) card for the money, whichever way you look at it.
The HD5850 in question is 8.5" long. Domestic_ginger - I didn't know that about Rev 2 cards. That is good to know though.
This card was on Overclockers a few weeks ago and I picked one up for £107, extremely good for the price.
Oh, they must have shrunk it then. the 5850 in our HTPC is 11" long (just measured it, out of curiosity) - the same as the GTX580 virtually.
This one looks to be using a custom Sapphire design (most likely to keep costs down) hence the size. I thought reference design HD5850's were shorter than HD5870's? The HD5870 I had was 11" long.
Ours is the 1GB XFX HD5850 Black Edition - definately 11" long. I do recall at the time wondering why it was so long for a 'mid-range' card.
It wasn't a midrange card back in the day. Wish I would've waited a bit longer, this card is an absolute steal!
yeah, marine has a tendancy to use phrases like that without really looking at who says what or taking into account that it's common to hear from people with problems whereas the people without problems tend to not post... really? wonder how occ got theirs to 1000+ on the core? using trixx no less...
most definitely...but it wasn't a gold sample or anything... as always, you're mileage may, and most likely will, vary. im curious if the oc kitguru achieved was done for xfire or was that done while in single card configuration.
I think they just got luck really. I don't think that Kitguru would have got a significantly better overclock in a single card setup as Hardwareheaven got a similarly low overclock of 840Mhz. Source: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...e-and-x58-pure-black-power-temp-noise-oc.html
im also curious how they arrive at a stable oc? didn't see anything in either kit or hh that said how they went about it...didn't read too thoroughly though... regardless...at $150, even at stock, this is a great deal...at that price you have to drop down to a 768 mb 460, and even with a good oc on that card vs this card stock, it's a slightly better card.
I believe the default voltage that comes with the non-reference cards varys...some might have higher default voltage than the others, so they could achieve higher overclock. But if someone got a high default voltage card, they could upload their bios for other people with the same model card to flash to I guess?
