Reviews - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 vs. AMD Radeon HD 5850 CrossFire - battle at £450

[HEXUS]

There's more than one way to spend £450 on your graphics setup. We examine the value, or not, offered by a pair of Radeon HD 5850 cards and pit them against NVIDIA's finest GPU.

Read more.

[0iD]

At the moment, two HD5850's just makes more sense on every level. (imo) No-one but the die-hard Nvidia fanbois are going to pay that kind of cash just for one card, especially those who are worried about next-gen DX11 performance.

[RIX]

I think sapphire should make a 5850 X2 (just like the 4850 X2) and a similar style cooler.

[Ramon]

Last nail in the coffin for Nvidia 4XX series?

No mater how you spin this, there is no way some "magical driver" optimization could ever close the monumental gap in performance we are seeing here. For the same price, the 5850XF just trounce the 480 in every games, at all resolutions while taking less power, runs cooler with less noise. The worse part for Nvidia is that they have no margin to reduce prices. ATI, plenty and they don't even need to! Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place!

Also, even when the 5870 "lose" to the 480, the 5870 still pull like 90-125 FPS. Who care to run at 90 instead of 150 FPS when you can save 100$, 155W and 13c??? Especially when in all other games, it's a virtual tie. The data clearly demonstrate that the 480 is an irrelevant piece of hardware, even when compared to a 5870. If it's true for the 480, it's even more so for the 470. Both the 5850 and the 5870 are better choices than the 470 in term of price/power/heat/noise VS performance ratio.

A 5950 and a 5890 would be a death sentence, over the already pronounced death sentence provided by this review! Nvidia is clearly in deep sh*t. They have no choice: They must come back VERY quickly with a full 512sp GTX490 that can run at over 700Mhz, below 90c and way below 50db. The problem is, I don't think an A3 silicon stepping could pull this off. What then? Wait 3-6 months for A4 or even A5 steeping? Or worse, wait at LEAST 12-18 months for a 28nm die shrink? (TSMC completely scrapped the 32nm node and 28nm is all but ready).

Both scenarios are hopeless for Nvidia anyway. Even if ATI's original "Northern islands" new architecture will have to wait until TSMC has sorted out its 28nm mess, no sooner than Q2 2011 as it seems, they are still coming with an hybrid update @ 40nm named "Southern islands" in Q3 2010, or about 6 months from now. Apparently, this new chip has already tapped out! (Only rumors, but considering ATI recent track record, probably true). Even if by miracle Nvidia pull this off and produce a full Fermi with thermal under control, Southern islands will decimate it before 2010 is out.

[sawyen]

Hahahahahahahahahhahaha.. *choke*.. hahahahaha... heeeiihh

Well, if you work out the economics in Asia now, 5850 is even more of a better deal, they're selling it for spot on USD250 in south east asia..

Anyone on a holiday there should definitely bag 2 of them. (I was on holiday there, but sadly I could only bag 1 sapphire version)... If it works out nicely over the money changer, under £340

[Infinite]

Only about £175 in HK, would be a lot better if the Pound wasnt so fail, swear this is the lowest I have seen it in years

[Blackmage]

Why do Two 5850 Perform as well as a 5970?

[HW_90]

hey guys at hexus, I can get a GTX 480 for £335, what would the bang4buck score be on it now?

and also I can get a GTX 470 for £235, would it be worth getting that instead and using the spare £100 towards a new monitor or water cooling kit?

oh yeah, no hints on where I can get them for that price.

[Percy1983]

Looks like the 5850 XF is a good upgrade path for me, right now the 5850 does all I want but when the 6*** and 5** series come out a cheap 5850 might be a better choice.

[GaryRW]

* the normalisation refers to taking playable frame rate into account. Should a card benchmark at over 60 frames per second in any one game, the extra fps count as half. Similarly, should a card benchmark lower, say at 40fps, we deduct half the difference from its average frame rate and the desired 60fps, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.

..... snip .....

Evaluation

Radeon HD 5970-matching performance for £100 less. Says it all, really. The 2,560x1,600 HEXUS.bang4buck is lower than expected due to the anomalous Crysis score.

But all the cards hit less than 20 fps in the 2,560x1,600 crysis benchmark, so although the 5850 XF was slower, it should have had no effect on the bang4buck as they all scored a bit fat 0. Or am I missing something obvious?

Yup, you're correct. It's the aggregate that changes, not the normliased. (TS)

[ET3D]

I don't live in the UK, but from what I could find, the standard price for the 480 is £430, and getting a pair of 5850 for £450 isn't that easy. I'd love some references to well known UK PC stores that have other prices.

Not that I dispute the conclusions, but I feel that you massaged the prices a little.

[Hicks12]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-A...DP-2x-DVI-HDMI

Thats £223 for 5850

But yes it would appear theres one 480 from gainward thats £430, its not instock however so maybe they undercutting for sales?

[pete910]

I don't live in the UK, but from what I could find, the standard price for the 480 is £430, and getting a pair of 5850 for £450 isn't that easy. I'd love some references to well known UK PC stores that have other prices.

Not that I dispute the conclusions, but I feel that you massaged the prices a little.

It's quite easy! First one I came across ebuyer.com/product/199769 # £228.68inc. vat with COD:MW2

I can even find a 5870 for £294.98 inc vat

And getting a 480 is even harder as they are not available yet in the UK

Pete.

[Jimbo75]

An nVidia AIB asked you to do this? Safe to say their name starts and ends with X?

[kalniel]

An nVidia AIB asked you to do this? Safe to say their name starts and ends with X?

Hehe that might be my guess too

But regardless, it was a question that needed answering and kudos to Hexus for doing that. What a result for ATI.

[Syllopsium]

*snigger*. Two 5850s is a good deal - not only is it competitive with a 480, I also suggest it's competitive with an Eyefinity6 for most of its uses.

The only nitpick I'd raise is that it's worth remembering that the performance loss from x16 to x8 is remarkably low with all the modern generation of cards. If I recall the figures correctly, it'd even be worth running xfire 5850 on my 975X motherboard that's limited to 2x PCI-e 1.0 @ 8x..