Upgrade: ATi 4850 to ???

S

sethmo

2[H]4U
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Nov 10, 2002
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I currently have the rig in my sig, but I just bought a Phenom X4 965, Asus mobo, and 4gb DDR3 ram which all should be here Monday. But I didn't upgrade my video card. I wasn't sure if upgrading to a 5850 would justify the cost. Am I right on holding out for a few more months? What new cards are getting released this year? I don't think I would spend over $300 on a new card. I like to play games at the Hanns G native display(1920x1200) and with BF:BC2, my current rig cannot get anywhere close.

Any suggestions?
 
The 5850 would not be a bad choice, though even something like a 5770 wouldn't be a bad option either.

Another thing you might consider is looking for a 4870x2 used. You are looking at performance equivalent to that of a 5870 yet they can be found for as low as $200 used which is half the price of the 5870. It's also not plagued with any of the grey screen issues, etc that the newer cards have.
 
What about a 4890? I'll be getting mine here shortly and I can re-post with some in-game test results if you want.
 
I have had the 5770 and it is a great card for the price. I have since upgraded to a 5850 but i would highly suggest you give the 5770 a try.
 
The 5770 is a horrible upgrade option for the 4850. You won't get much more performance out of the 5770.
 
Cschill1290 said:
What about a 4890? I'll be getting mine here shortly and I can re-post with some in-game test results if you want.
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This. Unless Direct 11 games suddenly start coming out in massive waves blotting out the sun it really is the best priced Ati card.
 
Sit tight for a few more months and see what Nvidia's next generation of cards and a possible ATI refresh do to the market prices. Right now GPU prices are all out of whack because there is no competition in the midrange and above. As long as Nvidia doesn't botch their launch we should see value in the $150-200 segment again. Right now a 5770 isn't going to give you enough of a performance increase over your 4850 to justify the cost. A 5770 is pretty much the equivalent of a 4870 with DX11 support.
 
buy a 4890 and an ssd for your 3 bills. you can crossfire the 2 cards, also. i dont know what kind of results you would get, tho.
 
Microcenter has a 5870 for $357 shipped, but I think I am going to hold out until at least March. I think the PhenomII upgrade should give me enough of a performance increase to hold me over.

Thanks for the suggestions guys!
 
I wouldn't count on the Phenom II giving you enough horsepower for BC2. I have a 4850 with my Phenom 9850 right now, and it's not anywhere near enough for full settings.
 
Cschill1290 said:
I wouldn't count on the Phenom II giving you enough horsepower for BC2. I have a 4850 with my Phenom 9850 right now, and it's not anywhere near enough for full settings.
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yeah but the 9850 is a pretty poor quad. even in games that use more than 2 cores its usually matched and sometimes beaten by faster dual cores like the E8500 or so. in games that only use 1 or 2 cores it really gets murdered by high end dual cores. a Phenom 2 X4 is much faster clock for clock than a 9850 and of course its clocked higher so it really beats the crap out of the old Phenom 1 cpus.
 
cannondale06 said:
yeah but the 9850 is a pretty poor quad. even in games that use more than 2 cores its usually matched and sometimes beaten by faster dual cores like the E8500 or so. in games that only use 1 or 2 cores it really gets murdered by high end dual cores. a Phenom 2 X4 is much faster clock for clock than a 9850 and of course its clocked higher so it really beats the crap out of the old Phenom 1 cpus.
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Oh, yeah I know that the new ones are better, but still. With the 4850, the cpu just isn't gonna give that much of a performance increase.
 
if you want a real upgrade from the gpu that you already got i have to say the 5850 or 5870.
 
I just went from the 4850 to the 4890 and it did not do much good for BF:BC2 as it seems it needs lots of optimization. It did help a bit, but the game needs lots of work. To get proper performance it seems you need an i5/i7 and a 5850/5870. Which is kinda stupid.

But, all other games play much better on the 4890. I fired up Aion and can now have highest quality with AA/AF maxed. Something i couldnt do on my 4850.

So the 4890 was a nice upgrade for me in all games but BF:BC2, where it's only slighty better.

If you can afford a 5850, go ahead. If not try to find a cheap 4890. Those are really your only two options.
 
Hellbilly said:
I just went from the 4850 to the 4890 and it did not do much good for BF:BC2 as it seems it needs lots of optimization. It did help a bit, but the game needs lots of work. To get proper performance it seems you need an i5/i7 and a 5850/5870. Which is kinda stupid.

But, all other games play much better on the 4890. I fired up Aion and can now have highest quality with AA/AF maxed. Something i couldnt do on my 4850.

So the 4890 was a nice upgrade for me in all games but BF:BC2, where it's only slighty better.

If you can afford a 5850, go ahead. If not try to find a cheap 4890. Those are really your only two options.
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you thought that you were going to see alot of improvement going from 4850 to 4890? lol?
 
DualOwn said:
you thought that you were going to see alot of improvement going from 4850 to 4890? lol?
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Not in BF:BC2 Beta. In all other games, it's awesome.

There is quite a bit of difference going from 512mb GDDR3 to 1GB GDDR5 and a higher clock.
 
Hellbilly said:
Not in BF:BC2 Beta. In all other games, it's awesome.

There is quite a bit of difference going from 512mb GDDR3 to 1GB GDDR5 and a higher clock.
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It's pretty well known that Ram seems to make more of a difference on Ati cards than Nvidia.

a 4870 1GB smokes a 4870 512MB at most resolutions.

Where as a GT250 1GB is the speed or slower than a GT250 512MB.

I hate when people ask if they should get a 1GB version of a DDR2 Nvidia card thats usually like $60 more. Such a waste.
 
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piscian18 said:
It's pretty well known that Ram seems to make more of a difference on Ati cards than Nvidia.

a 4870 1GB smokes a 4870 512MB at most resolutions.
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actually ATI is generally more efficient than Nvidia is with the same amount of ram.
 
Cschill1290 said:
I wouldn't count on the Phenom II giving you enough horsepower for BC2. I have a 4850 with my Phenom 9850 right now, and it's not anywhere near enough for full settings.
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Well I have an X2 4200+, I had to overclock it to 2.4GHz to make it somewhat playable. Prob average 25-30fps @ 1440x900 on Medium, 1xAA/AF, HBAO off, which is pretty poor.

Hopefully with the Phenom, i can play at the same res or higher @ medium, some AA/AF, and get better FPS.

Since their Audio processing is done by the CPU, a Quad core is really needed in this game. My current rig has no problems playing any other game @ 1920x1200 and high settings(I really only play COD4/5/6 right now, nothing real stressful).
 
sethmo said:
Well I have an X2 4200+, I had to overclock it to 2.4GHz to make it somewhat playable. Prob average 25-30fps @ 1440x900 on Medium, 1xAA/AF, HBAO off, which is pretty poor.

Hopefully with the Phenom, i can play at the same res or higher @ medium, some AA/AF, and get better FPS.

Since their Audio processing is done by the CPU, a Quad core is really needed in this game. My current rig has no problems playing any other game @ 1920x1200 and high settings(I really only play COD4/5/6 right now, nothing real stressful).
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I'm not following...so you're saying that my sound card is just sitting there doing nothing and the cpu is doing all of the audio work?
 
Hmm, well that's news to me. At least they're finding ways to utilize multiple cores I guess...
 
My setup is working rez at 1600x1200 everything max except med shadows and no bloom 2AA/16AF gets me in the mid 60s, so im planning to go xfire should help a bit...4890 should be your best bet if you got the cash..
 
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