Ok so, I'm looking at purchasing a good, fairly new graphics card. I've narrowed it down to the ATI 4000 or 5000 series. If I were to go 4000 series would the HIS 4770 IceQ 5 at the price of $155, be a good buy? If I were to go with the 5000 series would the XFX HD 5830 at the price of $200, be a good buy? Little about myself... New to afterdawn.com I've read articles in the past, but I haven't been a member per se. The rig I've been building and piecing together over the last couple years is as follows: (case) HAF 932 Full Tower (board) ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 (cpu) AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHZ (psu) Corsair 750TX (monitor) Acer 23" (hard drives) several TB's worth (optical drives) BD-rom, and a Lightscribe DVD/CD Rom and Writer I'm looking for a good price (100-250ish) on the video card. Don't need top of the line, since I want to play some starcraft2 on something other than the lowest settings. I do some photoshop and photo editing, and I'm looking to try a bit of video. ATI (or just AMD now, i guess) has at the moment what I'm interested in. DDR5, with lots of options Please, serious answer only. I'm open to advice.
I would go with something from the 5 series...ignoring the fact that you usually get more performance per dollar, you have newer directx support for the newer games that need it.
The only things different (that I can see) with the 5830 are the price and the stream processors... I'm not entirely sure what the stream processors help with...?
The 5830 is much faster...about 800 points higher in passmark tests (and the 4770 only scored 1200, so that is saying a lot)
$155 is a rip if it's US dollars, a serious one. The HD5830 is a much better buy, it's a good 60% faster, and is far more up to date.
But for a different reason, since adding more cores almost always guarantees extra performance with graphics cards, the same is not true of CPUs.
DON'T GET 5830!!! it is very little performance upgrade from 5770 and costs 30-50$ more...i would look at the 5770 or go a bit more and check out the 5850, or even dual 5750's...but the 5830 is just wasted money...much like alienware now that dell took it over ^^ as for the 4xxx series the 4870 performs a little better then the 5770 but is lacking in dx11, if u want a more lengthy pro/con etc etc etc then let me know otherwise that's my 2 cents worth xD.
jkl, with respect, that's not correct at all. The HD5830 is a good 35% faster than the HD5770, and it's less than 20% more expensive ($190 vs $165). The HD5850 is wasted money unless they reduce the price, as it's only 20% faster than the HD5830, but nearly 40% more expensive ($260 vs $190). Dual HD5750s is also a silly idea, as it's not even that powerful when crossfire is working well (Even with 80% scaling, it's only slightly faster than an HD5830, and two HD5750s cost $240, far more than the HD5830), and you have the problems with crossfire. The HD5830 is currently by far the best value HD5 series card.
btw as for your question on stream processors, just think of it like this, nvidia's basic take on gpu's is to have a couple "super" geeks crunch the numbers, and ati's stream processors is more like having a bunch of kids crunch the numbers, but the difference lies in the nvidia way can handle large numbers quickly, but the bunch of kids can handle lots of smaller numbers just as fast. so it's kinda like having superman vs everyone else on who can build a wall faster, superman may be faster then a speeding bullet but everyone else only has to lay one brick. least that's who i have to explain it to my friends so they get it ^^. if u want the complex version...well that's for another time altogether.
That's not a very good analogy. There are lots more architectural differences that define how a graphics card handles things, such as the memory bus, memory speed, clock speeds and so on. Overall nvidia GPUs are good at handling high stress, such as high levels of Anti-Aliasing and lots of models on the screen at once. Conversely, ATI GPUs are less good at many multiples of things, but can do the same job with a lot less power. Interesting, because that's almost the exact opposite of your kids/geeks analogy, even though it makes sense at first glance.
@ samoris, i also gotta debate that...last i looked the 5830 was about 10% faster unless the new drivers have really sped it up...which actually i just looked at some more recent reviews and i guess they have actually, so it is up a good bit in performance, however onto price vs performance... 2 5750's(roughly about the 5850's performance range) = 210$+s/h http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102859 5770= 124$ after mail in rebate, so about 250$ for the performance of a 5870 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102873 1 5830=roughly 200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102878 and 1 5850=260ish http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102884 1 5870= 350$+ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102883 now the 58xx series has a better memory bandwidth and so will perform better if u have multiple large displays. then the crossfired comparisons. if i gotta link to some reviews showing the similarity i will, but i think this should be enough, but thank you sammorris for raising that point got me looking at that, would u mind looking at my thread i started? thanks if u do ^^
lol the analogy was pointing towards the actual artitecture, the nvidia gpu's do handle high stress which is what i was trying to point out, but they handle serial tasks alot better, and take that approach on most everything they do, BUT ati likes to multitask. no one core doing anything amazing but all combined can compete against nvidia and in more recent cases win ( sorry to say that to all nvidia fanboys out there ^^) (but u gotta admit it, or pay more for less performance meh your decision. if the analogy didn't come across very clear i apologize though but hopefully that helps clear it up ^^)
The only problematic drivers for the HD5830 were the very first set it shipped with, which led to some bizarre reviews. Everywhere I look though, I place the cards in the following performance order: HD5750: 75% HD4850: 80% HD5770: 95% HD4870: 100% HD5830: 130% HD5850: 155% HD5870: 180% The price you stated for the 5750s is after a mail-in rebate. Not only do mail-in rebates take considerable time, they're often unreliable. We'll talk about up-front cost here (Also bear in mind mail-in rebates are not available in many countries, since they are illegal) Two HD5750s do not perform like an HD5870, nowhere close. Two HD5770s will struggle to compete with one, let alone two HD5750s. ATI likes to mulitask? How so?
i think u misread my previous post it said "2 5750's(roughly about the 5850's performance" not the 5870's) and ati's entire artitecture is built around it! and yes when i was last shopping for gpu's they were still on the first set of drivers for the 5830, probably hence why i was comparing them based on a 10% gain. also if i ever leave the states i'll definately have to remember that bit about them being illegal. ok i can tell you want more of an answer that that simple reply in the multitasking. on the ati side i think i see where you're going with that, you're probably thinking of nvidia's cuda and physX (i still say nvidia has no claim on physX they just bought out a small company with a good idea) and you are right, nvidia does multitask in the sense that they work with the cpu and take the load off doing other things in the computer. my point was purely on the graphics side though. ati will attack the equivalent of one of nvidia's calculations with about 3-4 cores working on it. is it better? no is it worse? no. just a different way allowing lower power usage and cooler temps (generally speaking temps are not garaunteed on all cards) amd is reknowned for being able to multitask on the cpu side and handle many things at once, making them great for editing, servers, etc etc etc. with intel's generally being better for intense power hungery applications, i.e. gaming. (btw i consider ati/amd the same company since technically they are) so amd is better for multitasking while the nvidia cards can generally hand larger calculations. i'm hoping this is making sense i'm going on hour 20 so srry if it doesn't.
Ah, I was reading the line underneath. Your post is formatted really quite badly CUDA/PhysX is not my idea of multitask. That's simply Stream processing, I suppose you could interpret it as multitasking, but within one application.
yep, well off to bed got work tonight, i'll get back on in the morn. and srry for the bad formatting i guess i'm just used to reading it XD. but if u think that's bad my c++ teacher thinks it's funny to write all of his code on one single line for our timed assignments, troubleshooting 300 lines of code that's all on one line is not fun D:
Lol, I know very little about coding, but that seems pretty bad. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to work through all that!
sure u can...just try making sense of my writing now i guess the question that really has to be asked here is, do u want a better gpu configuration for a single monitor but you'll probably have to completely get rid of if u upgrade it again in the next couple years(2 5750's or 5770's), or a slightly worse for now one that allows u to keep it and put off having to go get a completely new vga set for a while longer(5850)? or just hit the middle road allowing u to put it off a bit longer but not as long as the 5850, with worse performance, then either of the other 2 suggestions(5830). in this case to me it just depends on if u trust the mail in rebates or not, if not i'd go the extra money and get the 5850, even though the 5830 has closed that performance gap a good bit i'm betting u can still find one in your price range and the higher performance will allow u to go longer without upgrading again. if you do trust them to send u the money i'd probably go the 5750's or 5770's...just remember 2 5750's will be about (i think a little faster but not much faster then the 5750's but adding more to them will be a waste of money since 3 way CFX is BS (u get almost no gain for the third card) 5830's is a good option if u just want to have 1 card that is upgradable later but don't want to spend more then u have to now.
3-way Crossfire is far from BS. It works a lot better than 4-way Crossfire does, and even 4-way crossfire is reasonable (but only if you are using the fastest GPUs, since it's always better to 2-crossfire better cards than 4-crossfire slower ones) The HD5850 will last you perhaps a bit longer, but really, when it comes down to 20fps vs 17fps, neither card is really going to wow, frankly the HD5850 and HD5870 are genuinely overpriced. For people who will pay a lot more to get the best they can, I'll still include them, but I'd now start making people aware of just how much cheaper systems with 5830s and 5750s are.
