5850 vs GTX470?

KipCoo said:
Which has better performance and produces less heat?
Click to expand...

Strange question, as the answer is neither one will win both of these. The 470 is a faster performer but runs hotter, takes more power, and has a louder fan. Both are over clockable but gtx470 definitely takes the performance crown between the two.

Now how much louder the fan is, how hot the 470 really is and how much power it takes is the subject of alot of debating here on the foums.
 
Jeffredo said:
Going to pay more though. The GTX 470 definitely is the better performer. Hell, most any factory OC'd GTX 460 matches or beats an HD 5850 these days.
Click to expand...

You should modify this to say an overclocked 1gig 460 matches or beats a stock speed 5850. If you overclock the 5850, it will beat the 460.
 
I'd go for whichever one is cheaper. The GTX 470 is faster, yes, but just ever so barely. For all intents and purposes, they are almost equal on performance. So if you're going single card, get the cheaper. If you are going multi-gpu, get the 470.

As for heat, the 5850 uses far less power (and thus produces far less heat) - that isn't even close. Unless you actually mean temperature, which is a different story - that all depends on what the cooling the card comes with.
 
If I were you, I'd just get a GTX 460 1GB and overclock the crap out of it, they perform on par with the 5850 but has all the goodies that come with nvidia cards and a lot cheaper.
 
With the newer drivers, the 470 is handily better than the 5850, albeit at a higher power/heat cost.
 
Forceman said:
With the newer drivers, the 470 is handily better than the 5850, albeit at a higher power/heat cost.
Click to expand...

Only if you define handily as 5%.

There weren't any magical Fermi drivers, performance has improved maybe 1 or 2% since launch (which really isn't surprising).

If I were you, I'd just get a GTX 460 1GB and overclock the crap out of it, they perform on par with the 5850 but has all the goodies that come with nvidia cards and a lot cheaper.
Click to expand...

They perform on par with the 5850 *AFTER THEY ARE OVERCLOCKED*. Stock they get their ass handed to them. So while an OC'd 460 is on par with a *stock* 5850, an OC'd 460 gets smoked by an OC'd 5850.

Though if you are OK with comparing OC to stock, an OC'd 5850 absolutely runs circles around a pathetically slow stock 460 :p
 
I remember the 470 was a tad slower than the 5850 at release. Now it's slightly faster than a 5870
 
thefreeaccount said:
Except that the 5850 is a better OCer than the 460...
Click to expand...

Lets be clear the 5850 is NOT a better OCer than a gtx 460. A 460 can be overclocked to reach over 40% more performance with stock cooling. The 5850 cannot on stock cooling.

What you should have said is a GTX 460 1gb overclocked to the max can reach 5850 1gb stock speeds. However the 5850 could overclock to go much higher than that, thus giving much more performance overall.
 
470 consumes more power, and is faster in benchmarks afaik.

Is the difference noticeable? doubt it unless youre pushing a 2440x1600 screen.

Just remember that clock for clock a 5850 is about 5% within a 5870.

Lord_Exodia said:
Lets be clear the 5850 is NOT a better OCer than a gtx 460. A 460 can be overclocked to reach over 40% more performance with stock cooling. The 5850 cannot on stock cooling.
Click to expand...


The problem is coolers are so different. Are we talking reference coolers, the gigabyte coolers, the ice-q coolers? etc etc.
Also chips vary, what one can do doesnt always translate perfectly to the other, and other people's definition of stable can vary widly.

YMMV.
 
HD 5850 can often approach the same max OC as a 5870 when they are receiving like voltage. Below are 20 end users clocking 1000MHz or better with the 5850. The majority are not using water cooling.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=235693

IMO they're both great cards.

BTW a GTX 460 1Gb @ 855 on the core is around stock 470 performance in some titles.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Point_Of_View/GeForce_GTX_460_TGT_Beast/7.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Point_Of_View/GeForce_GTX_460_TGT_Beast/6.html

Sometimes a little faster, other times a little slower.

You can get a 470 on Newegg for 280usd.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187110&cm_re=gtx_470-_-14-187-110-_-Product

You can get an HD 5850 for 260usd.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125318&cm_re=hd_5850-_-14-125-318-_-Product

A GTX 460 1Gb may be had for 220usd.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0169&cm_re=gtx_460_1gb-_-14-500-169-_-Product

The MSI version of that card is only 10usd more and has a better cooler.

I don't think you'd regret owning any of the cards I've mentioned. It will come down to the features you want, the games you play most often, and the price you find appealing.
 
Last edited:
i used to have 5850 cf, now i have 470 sli. the 470 run a bit hotter. they sound around the same. the 470 seems to scale better in sli than does the 5850 in crossfire.also, the 470 can be had cheaper than the 5850. i got mine for $250 ea a few weeks ago, and i saw it for $250 somewhere else in hot deals.
 
Cat1yst said:
The problem is coolers are so different. Are we talking reference coolers, the gigabyte coolers, the ice-q coolers? etc etc.
Also chips vary, what one can do doesnt always translate perfectly to the other, and other people's definition of stable can vary widly.

YMMV.
Click to expand...

YMMV is always true in overclocking, however I can't let somebody say the 5850 is a better overclocker because it's not. It easily gives the better performance because in the best case scenario the GTX460 1gb can reach 5850 1gb stock speed. a 5850 can be pushed to 25%-30% more than 5850 1gb speeds. Now keep in mind it's supposed to give the better performance, it's in another price bracket altogether.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
YMMV is always true in overclocking, however I can't let somebody say the 5850 is a better overclocker because it's not.
Click to expand...

Bullshit. 5850s reach 5870 clocks or close quite easily. Even easier if you can find models that allow voltage control.

http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/overclocking-the-radeon-hd-5850/
Our HD5850 was stable up to 875MHz using 1.15V.
Click to expand...

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...viewed-The-DirectX-11-bargain/Reviews/?page=4
Our Radeon HD 5850s were stable up to 830/2400 MHz, which is almost as much as the bigger HD 5870 is running at.
Click to expand...

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/xfx5850/5.htm
the highest overclock I tried for was 1GHz on the GPU core and 1210 MHz on the GDDR5 memory. A relative overclock of about 38% on the GPU core and 21% on the memory - both fantastic overclocks.
Click to expand...

878/1400

820/1250
 
The 5850 also has linear pcm and dolby true hd/dts master audio bitstreaming for ones who want to keep their sound digital.
 
Speaking of that. Go ask a GTX460 owner if they can bitstream True HD/DTS audio with their cards yet. More than 2 months after release Nvidia has not released drivers that enable it...
 
Lorien said:
Bullshit. 5850s reach 5870 clocks or close quite easily. Even easier if you can find models that allow voltage control.

http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/overclocking-the-radeon-hd-5850/


http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...viewed-The-DirectX-11-bargain/Reviews/?page=4


http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/xfx5850/5.htm


878/1400

820/1250
Click to expand...

Lorien I never said a HD 5850 can't reach HD 5870 speeds or overclock up to 38%. Read my posts again. I said it can't overclock as high from it's stock speeds as GTX 460 can. GTX 460 have shown over 40% + boosts from it's stock frequencies. Again re-read my posts. I know the 5850 is faster because when overclocked the best you can hope from your GTX 460 is that it'll be at or around HD 5850 1gb STOCK speed.

Either way this is about GTX 470 vs 5850. It depends on your configuration and how much heat/noise/power usage you find tollerable. But I think GTX 470 is better for most High end gamers overall.
 
460 is priced way too close to a 5850 right now. $200 vs $260 for a 5850. A GTX 470 can be found for $289 new as well. Seems like these price drops indicate new gen cards coming :cool:...what a perfect time to build a system
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Lorien I never said a HD 5850 can't reach HD 5870 speeds or overclock up to 38%. Read my posts again. I said it can't overclock as high from it's stock speeds as GTX 460 can. GTX 460 have shown over 40% + boosts from it's stock frequencies. Again re-read my posts. I know the 5850 is faster because when overclocked the best you can hope from your GTX 460 is that it'll be at or around HD 5850 1gb STOCK speed.

Either way this is about GTX 470 vs 5850. It depends on your configuration and how much heat/noise/power usage you find tollerable. But I think GTX 470 is better for most High end gamers overall.
Click to expand...


40% + @stock cooling is BS, 675 * 1.4 = 945, most of the review sites can only get it to around mid 800s, 40% is not a norm, so stop saying as if it is.
 
KipCoo said:
Which has better performance and produces less heat?
Click to expand...

the bellow is from an H review. both have the same playability despite what canned benchmarks say. the do trade back and form in games and driver releases. If your worried about heat the clear winner is the 5850. if your looking at crossfire scaling the 460 is actually not looking bad but only as a dual card configuration at this level (awesome card though)

Really I can't see the 470 for a solution at all. at least with the GTX480 your getting the fastest single gpu and possible the fastest dual card solution for the heat and power. unless the 470 are really cheap I would not take them over the other options. JM2C

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/06/01/gigabyte_r585oc_video_card_review/8
NVIDIA vs. Gigabyte R5850C

Our first showdown was between the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 and the Gigabyte R5850C. Splinter Cell: Conviction was the only game where the GTX 470 preformed better than the Gigabyte R5850C and that was only do to the little more efficient CSAA mode. In Metro 2033 the battle was a draw with both being playable at the same settings. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and in Aliens vs. Predator the victory went to the Gigabyte R5850C with it not only being able to give a similar gameplay experience but also offering versatility in the settings.

On top of that our power and temperature testing didn’t work in GTX 470’s favor either. At idle the GTX 470 pulled off an upset by drawing less power than the Gigabyte R5850C. At full load however it drew nearly 50 Watts more and reached 92c. The final straw though is the price. While the GTX 470 costs $350 the Gigabyte R5850C can be had for $40 less at $310.
Click to expand...
 
mafa said:
40% + @stock cooling is BS, 675 * 1.4 = 945, most of the review sites can only get it to around mid 800s, 40% is not a norm, so stop saying as if it is.
Click to expand...

Here is 1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-geforce-gtx-460-hawk-review/20

and there are many others. Most sites dont bother trying harder. With a simple voltage adjustment the card can hit frequencies much higher than 840. I have a thread here on the forums and there are threads at many other hardware forums where people are easily overclocking beyond 945 so all you gotta do is a little homework.

Here is my thread. It's funny too cause it starts off around 840ish and then with shared feedback things start going higher for the posters

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1541280

Again YMMV with each card but with a little tweaking and voltage adjustment you can really push the card. Now to clarify myself I definitely mis-spoke. The GTX 460 doesn't overclock 40% beyond its stock frequencies as a norm. It can overclock to drive over 40% more performance beyond it's stock clocks. The overclock itself isn't as far from stock as 40% although they have gone that high rarely too but when overclocked you get much more performance out of them, sometimes even 40% higher depending on the application and settings.

The little time the 460 has been out has gained it notoriety over it's overclocking ability. It is practically built for overclocking and it is normal to buy this 1gb version @ $200-$230ish and push it to 5850 1gb speeds, which was much more, but prices have come down from AMD lately. Suddenly you can get 5850s for about $50 cheaper than when the 460 had launched
 
Forceman said:
I've seen reviews that show something on the order of 20% improvement with the 470, which I do define as handily. Like this one:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/19342/8
Click to expand...

1) I happen to prefer real results to canned benchmarks, and if you check [H]'s reviews the 5850 actually WINS in performance

2) Even other canned sites disagree with that: http://techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_470_Dual/29.html

There is less than a 10% performance difference at all resolutions, and at 2560x1600 it drops to 1%. 20%? Not a chance.

3) You want to talk about the effect of new drivers and then link to a review using old drivers for the ATI cards? Nice, real nice. But for what it's worth, [H] did a comparison of Fermi's new drivers vs. the launch ones: http://hardocp.com/article/2010/06/16/nvidia_forceware_25721_driver_performance/1 Outside of a couple of specific scenarios, the overall performance improvement was 1 or 2%, it didn't change anything.

ebolamonkey3 said:
I remember the 470 was a tad slower than the 5850 at release. Now it's slightly faster than a 5870
Click to expand...

No, no it isn't. Even canned benchmarks don't show the 470 beating the 5870 - where did you see that?
 
All the people claiming you can simply "overclock" the 5850 to 5870 levels- Explain to me how overclocking is going to magically make a card with 1440 stream processors (5850) perform at the level of a card with 1600 stream processors (5870), even if they are at the same clockspeed. You would actually have to clock it a bit above the clocks of the 5870 to match it's performance.
 
If you want to game in single card, I would not hesitate with a 5870. If you want to go dual, 470 Sli will destroy a 5870 CFX. So thats my 2 cents.
 
GotNoRice said:
All the people claiming you can simply "overclock" the 5850 to 5870 levels- Explain to me how overclocking is going to magically make a card with 1440 stream processors (5850) perform at the level of a card with 1600 stream processors (5870), even if they are at the same clockspeed. You would actually have to clock it a bit above the clocks of the 5870 to match it's performance.
Click to expand...

And that's exactly what they mean, OC the 5850 past the 5870's clockspeeds to match it on performance.
 
GotNoRice said:
All the people claiming you can simply "overclock" the 5850 to 5870 levels- Explain to me how overclocking is going to magically make a card with 1440 stream processors (5850) perform at the level of a card with 1600 stream processors (5870), even if they are at the same clockspeed. You would actually have to clock it a bit above the clocks of the 5870 to match it's performance.
Click to expand...

HURR You know a lot of people can hit 1ghz with a 5850 right?
 
kllrnohj said:
1) I happen to prefer real results to canned benchmarks, and if you check [H]'s reviews the 5850 actually WINS in performance

2) Even other canned sites disagree with that: http://techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_470_Dual/29.html

There is less than a 10% performance difference at all resolutions, and at 2560x1600 it drops to 1%. 20%? Not a chance.

3) You want to talk about the effect of new drivers and then link to a review using old drivers for the ATI cards? Nice, real nice. But for what it's worth, [H] did a comparison of Fermi's new drivers vs. the launch ones: http://hardocp.com/article/2010/06/16/nvidia_forceware_25721_driver_performance/1 Outside of a couple of specific scenarios, the overall performance improvement was 1 or 2%, it didn't change anything.
Click to expand...

I linked to the most recent review that compared the two cards that I had found. Sorry if that doesn't meet your standards of reviews - but the fact remains that they found what they found. The Techpowerup review you linked is from May, and still uses launch drivers (195 series), so it is certainly nothing to compare to. And my point wasn't that the drivers increased perormance, it was that the 470 shows a 20% performance edge over the 5850 in their testing (probably could have worded that better in my original post).
 
ATI has had fare fare more time with driver updates than Nvidia has. Since release Fermi is slowly performing better and better. Give it the amount of time ATI has had to perfect drivers (something Nvidia is good at...) and the GTX 470 will assert it's dominance. If your going to do any folding go Nvidia due to the CUDA cores which make ATI's Stream look just plain retarded. Also in GPU computing in general Nvidia holds the crown and unless ATI does something radical it always will. Another favor with the 470 is Physx.

Now on the other hand if entertainment (HTPC) and gaming is the only thing you plan to do, go ATI hands down as their AVIVO rocks.
 
My 5850 is a screamer. 1030/1254 no problem. This makes it faster than a 5870 (stock).

But i am about to install a GTX 460 768mb just to have some fun. I just want to see what it is capable of.
 
MrSpock2002 said:
ATI has had fare fare more time with driver updates than Nvidia has. Since release Fermi is slowly performing better and better. Give it the amount of time ATI has had to perfect drivers (something Nvidia is good at...) and the GTX 470 will assert it's dominance.
Click to expand...

Drivers have almost never changed the relative performance of cards. Waiting for drivers to make a noticeable impact on performance (for a single card I mean) is like waiting for a unicorn to bust through your front door and shit rainbows all over your face. If it happens, fucking sweet, but never count on it. It is extremely rare. 1 or 2% improvements in some games every so often? Sure, that happens and is welcome, but it doesn't change much. 10% improvement? Ehh... probably won't even happen once in a card's lifetime.

And both sides are constantly improving performance, ATI has improved Evergreen's performance since Fermi came out as well.
 
GotNoRice said:
All the people claiming you can simply "overclock" the 5850 to 5870 levels- Explain to me how overclocking is going to magically make a card with 1440 stream processors (5850) perform at the level of a card with 1600 stream processors (5870), even if they are at the same clockspeed. You would actually have to clock it a bit above the clocks of the 5870 to match it's performance.
Click to expand...

Actually, there have been a few people(using canned benchmarks though) who've clocked the 5850 to 850/1200 and compared it to a stock 5870. The difference was only in the single digits, percentage wise. The extra shaders and TMUs don't make as much of a difference as one would think.

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7688&pageid=7230 --Link to a website benchmarking both the 5850 and 5870 at the same speed(800/1100). There is almost no difference, and the trend will stay the same as clocks rise.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Lets be clear the 5850 is NOT a better OCer than a gtx 460. A 460 can be overclocked to reach over 40% more performance with stock cooling. The 5850 cannot on stock cooling.

What you should have said is a GTX 460 1gb overclocked to the max can reach 5850 1gb stock speeds. However the 5850 could overclock to go much higher than that, thus giving much more performance overall.
Click to expand...

You are freaking wrong. Before I sold my reference 5850 I could get 30% overclock without overvolting and with overvolting I have no doubt i could get 40%+. Look at XS and they have tons of people oc'ing to 1GHz and beyond, many on air.

Comparing oc'd 460s to stock 5850s is rather disingenuous, by the way.
 
get a 470 and you be happy
or get that nice o 480 from galaxy from tigerdirectfor 375ar I think
 
Sounds like - Stock for both, 5850 wins.

Overclocking for both 5850 wins.

------------------------------------------------

That is what I've settled on based on this thread.
 
If you plan on going multi-gpu anytime in the future then I'd definitely say go with the GTX 470, my 5850s are barely faster than my 4890s were. Comparing single card performance it was but crossfire scaling went south this generation for some reason whereas sli performance is 90%+ scaling. Also the ~250mb framebuffer from the 470 will be needed more with sli/cf. For a single gpu the HD5850 is still a pretty solid choice.
 
Last edited:
kinein said:
Sounds like - Stock for both, 5850 wins.

Overclocking for both 5850 wins.

------------------------------------------------

That is what I've settled on based on this thread.
Click to expand...

this with one caveat, dual 5850 don't scale well. if this isn't an issue the 5850 wins hands down.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top