I think the 5850, 6850/70 seem close enough to each other in benchmarks. I'll probably get the one that is more cost efficient when I go buy my parts this week. (Yes sometimes enu's prices shift very quickly). In my personal experiance I've liked ATI cards better than Nvidia. I've had two Nvidia cards both burn out in under a year. With basically the same conditions my ATI cards have lasted much, much longer.
So I've been doing a bit of research / reading reviews on my own to try to figure out which video card to get. My initial reaction after speculating costs, was the Sapphire radeon 6850 but I noticed that the 5850 was getting a bit better 3dmark scores. Would it be better for me to kick out another 40 bucks or so and get a 6870?
I don't quite understand why the cards in the older line up would be performing better, but from the little bit I've gathered it seems the 5850/5870 out perform the 6850/6870, could anyone explain to me why this is, and what is the purpose therefore in going w/ the 68's instead?
All I can say is that I really like my Radeon HD 5870. It has been a very solid performer, with minimal driver issues and it runs a heck of a lot cooler with less energy drain than my old GTX 280.
So I've been doing a bit of research / reading reviews on my own to try to figure out which video card to get. My initial reaction after speculating costs, was the Sapphire radeon 6850 but I noticed that the 5850 was getting a bit better 3dmark scores. Would it be better for me to kick out another 40 bucks or so and get a 6870?
I don't quite understand why the cards in the older line up would be performing better, but from the little bit I've gathered it seems the 5850/5870 out perform the 6850/6870, could anyone explain to me why this is, and what is the purpose therefore in going w/ the 68's instead?
Don't waste your money on a 6870 when you can literally "unlock" the 6850 and turn it into a 6870. The 6850 is the 6870 card just with the shaders disabled in the firmware.
Don't waste your money on a 6870 when you can literally "unlock" the 6850 and turn it into a 6870.
Or brick your card trying, which is a bigger waste of money.
You're probably thinking of "unlocking" a 6950 into a 6970. There have been some stories of that, and having two BIOSes on the card means you don't kill the card if you try that and fail. But there are reasons why the card was binned as a 6950 in the first place, so even if it seems to work initially, it might not be stable that way over the long run.
Don't waste your money on a 6870 when you can literally "unlock" the 6850 and turn it into a 6870.
Or brick your card trying, which is a bigger waste of money.
You're probably thinking of "unlocking" a 6950 into a 6970. There have been some stories of that, and having two BIOSes on the card means you don't kill the card if you try that and fail. But there are reasons why the card was binned as a 6950 in the first place, so even if it seems to work initially, it might not be stable that way over the long run.
You're wrong. The 6850 and 6870 are identical. Only difference is that the shaders are disabled on the 6850. I am referring to the 6850.. not the 6950.
If I were you I would look at this months Maximum PC article on the new intel CPU's coming out "Sandy Beach" or something like that. According to the article they run almost as fast as hexacore CPU's and cost less than $300. What is important here is that they will support only one video card manufacturer, can't remember which one it is though. I want to say it's "ATI" since ATI is made by "AMD" which is Intel's arch rival but I keep seeing "Nvidia" in my mind. Anyway it's worth a read so you don't handicap your new system from the git-go. good luck, I'm waiting till March to build my new system. : )
There are two methods for "unlocking" the 6950 into a 6970. The first is using the 6970 BIOS, which turns out to be less reliable because even when the shaders unlock successfully the memory on the 6950 cards is usually not quite up to par with the memory on the 6970 cards making the memory unstable since the 6970 defaults to higher memory clocks.
Don't waste your money on a 6870 when you can literally "unlock" the 6850 and turn it into a 6870.
Or brick your card trying, which is a bigger waste of money.
You're probably thinking of "unlocking" a 6950 into a 6970. There have been some stories of that, and having two BIOSes on the card means you don't kill the card if you try that and fail. But there are reasons why the card was binned as a 6950 in the first place, so even if it seems to work initially, it might not be stable that way over the long run.
You're wrong. The 6850 and 6870 are identical. Only difference is that the shaders are disabled on the 6850. I am referring to the 6850.. not the 6950.
They're based on the same Barts GPU chip, but they're different bins of the chip. Why do you think the 6850 has some shaders and TMUs and so forth disabled? Think AMD does that just for fun? It's because they didn't work right, or sometimes rather, not at 6870 clock speeds. Now, sometimes they can kind of work at 6870 clock speeds, and the reason that it was binned as a 6850 is that it doesn't have enough headroom, so AMD didn't think it would be reliable enough over the long term. If you're lucky and get one of those and flash it to a 6870, then maybe it works. It's quite a risk, though.
Also, 6850 cards tend to have memory chips rated at 1 GHz. A 6870 clocks them at 1.05 GHz, higher than the memory chips on a 6850 may be able to handle. Now, if you're lucky, maybe it works anyway. Or maybe it doesn't.
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"If I were you I would look at this months Maximum PC article on the new intel CPU's coming out "Sandy Beach" or something like that. According to the article they run almost as fast as hexacore CPU's and cost less than $300. What is important here is that they will support only one video card manufacturer, can't remember which one it is though. I want to say it's "ATI" since ATI is made by "AMD" which is Intel's arch rival but I keep seeing "Nvidia" in my mind. Anyway it's worth a read so you don't handicap your new system from the git-go. good luck, I'm waiting till March to build my new system. : )"
Umm... yikes. It's "Sandy Bridge". It's already out. A Core i5 2500 can be had for $210. For most purposes (including gaming), single-threaded performance is critical, so a Core i5 2500 will beat a six core Gulftown or Thuban. Sandy Bridge has a PCI Express controller (actually one in the processor and another in the chipset), so it can support any PCI Express video cards, regardless of vendor.
I've seen no evidence, whatsoever, that the 6850 can be flashed to a 6870 with a simple bios upgrade. It can be done with the 6950 because they card remains unaltered, hardware wise, when it's binned as a 6950, but this is not true of the vast majority of binned video cards (otherwise people would constantly be flashing anything and everything to anything and everything else that's based on the same chip, which they don't).
If the OP is still interested int his thread the gtx560 release caused quite a bit of price cutting in the ~£150-200 region of AMD cards, so the hd6950 will soon be found for sub £200, which is a great deal. As is the gtx560.
Comments
I think the 5850, 6850/70 seem close enough to each other in benchmarks. I'll probably get the one that is more cost efficient when I go buy my parts this week. (Yes sometimes enu's prices shift very quickly). In my personal experiance I've liked ATI cards better than Nvidia. I've had two Nvidia cards both burn out in under a year. With basically the same conditions my ATI cards have lasted much, much longer.
All I can say is that I really like my Radeon HD 5870. It has been a very solid performer, with minimal driver issues and it runs a heck of a lot cooler with less energy drain than my old GTX 280.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I seem to have issues with ATI cards so I only use Nvidia cards now. Personal choice, nothing agaist ATI cards they just don't like me much.
Don't waste your money on a 6870 when you can literally "unlock" the 6850 and turn it into a 6870. The 6850 is the 6870 card just with the shaders disabled in the firmware.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Radeon-HD-6950-to-HD-6970-Flashing-Tools-download-2658.html
Or brick your card trying, which is a bigger waste of money.
You're probably thinking of "unlocking" a 6950 into a 6970. There have been some stories of that, and having two BIOSes on the card means you don't kill the card if you try that and fail. But there are reasons why the card was binned as a 6950 in the first place, so even if it seems to work initially, it might not be stable that way over the long run.
You're wrong. The 6850 and 6870 are identical. Only difference is that the shaders are disabled on the 6850. I am referring to the 6850.. not the 6950.
If I were you I would look at this months Maximum PC article on the new intel CPU's coming out "Sandy Beach" or something like that. According to the article they run almost as fast as hexacore CPU's and cost less than $300. What is important here is that they will support only one video card manufacturer, can't remember which one it is though. I want to say it's "ATI" since ATI is made by "AMD" which is Intel's arch rival but I keep seeing "Nvidia" in my mind. Anyway it's worth a read so you don't handicap your new system from the git-go. good luck, I'm waiting till March to build my new system. : )
It's sandy bridge. At this time it's really not that great.
There are two methods for "unlocking" the 6950 into a 6970. The first is using the 6970 BIOS, which turns out to be less reliable because even when the shaders unlock successfully the memory on the 6950 cards is usually not quite up to par with the memory on the 6970 cards making the memory unstable since the 6970 defaults to higher memory clocks.
The better method is to mod the 6950 bios to unlock the shaders directly, leaving the memory at default 6950 clocks. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=2137760&postcount=381
The 6950 does indeed have a backup BIOS reducing the likelihood of bricking the card but it's always a potential concern.
@tkoreaper: you realize the tools you linked yourself refer to the 6950 -> 6970 right? Not the 6850?
They're based on the same Barts GPU chip, but they're different bins of the chip. Why do you think the 6850 has some shaders and TMUs and so forth disabled? Think AMD does that just for fun? It's because they didn't work right, or sometimes rather, not at 6870 clock speeds. Now, sometimes they can kind of work at 6870 clock speeds, and the reason that it was binned as a 6850 is that it doesn't have enough headroom, so AMD didn't think it would be reliable enough over the long term. If you're lucky and get one of those and flash it to a 6870, then maybe it works. It's quite a risk, though.
Also, 6850 cards tend to have memory chips rated at 1 GHz. A 6870 clocks them at 1.05 GHz, higher than the memory chips on a 6850 may be able to handle. Now, if you're lucky, maybe it works anyway. Or maybe it doesn't.
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"If I were you I would look at this months Maximum PC article on the new intel CPU's coming out "Sandy Beach" or something like that. According to the article they run almost as fast as hexacore CPU's and cost less than $300. What is important here is that they will support only one video card manufacturer, can't remember which one it is though. I want to say it's "ATI" since ATI is made by "AMD" which is Intel's arch rival but I keep seeing "Nvidia" in my mind. Anyway it's worth a read so you don't handicap your new system from the git-go. good luck, I'm waiting till March to build my new system. : )"
Umm... yikes. It's "Sandy Bridge". It's already out. A Core i5 2500 can be had for $210. For most purposes (including gaming), single-threaded performance is critical, so a Core i5 2500 will beat a six core Gulftown or Thuban. Sandy Bridge has a PCI Express controller (actually one in the processor and another in the chipset), so it can support any PCI Express video cards, regardless of vendor.
I've seen no evidence, whatsoever, that the 6850 can be flashed to a 6870 with a simple bios upgrade. It can be done with the 6950 because they card remains unaltered, hardware wise, when it's binned as a 6950, but this is not true of the vast majority of binned video cards (otherwise people would constantly be flashing anything and everything to anything and everything else that's based on the same chip, which they don't).
If the OP is still interested int his thread the gtx560 release caused quite a bit of price cutting in the ~£150-200 region of AMD cards, so the hd6950 will soon be found for sub £200, which is a great deal. As is the gtx560.