4890 CF vs 5850 vs 5870?

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ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
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Tiger Direct.

I live in Los Angeles, so Newegg charges me tax. They also have a 10% cashback with paypal deal today and tomorrow, so I'd be getting the 5850 at .25% off, and no bing. I don't know about $280 or however much, but at $308 I don't think the 5850 is worth it. I mean, yeah I can afford it, but that argument is terrible, I can afford a GTX 295 but I'm not going to buy one because shit is overpriced. Matter of principle, you know?

Plus, with one 4890 going for $145, I can't justify it. Thanks to your logic, I can't even justify buying a 5850 at $280, I'd be paying nearly twice as much for a 20-25% increase in performance, which would be great but at my resolution the 4890 hits 60+ FPS in most games just fine, even with AA on.

And with it at that price, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to feel any sort of buyer's remorse.
 
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ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
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Don't take this the wrong way, and considering the amount of them I wouldn't be surprised if not, but are you reading my posts? LA guy here, they charge me 9.75% tax
 
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ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
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Hahaha, I thought you said you were happy with your 260 for now.

You have to go through Bing. And it seems TigerDirect's 12.8% off is gone.

So go through CircuitCity (I think Tiger owns their online section).

Go to Bing, get on the shopping section, search CircuitCity at the top, then go down and click on the circuit city 12.5% cashback link on the right side.

From there just find what you need, and you'll get 12.5% cashback through Bing. You are familiar with Bing right?

Seems the 4890 costs $4 more now, but still, one for $150 is great.
 

happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
14,387
480
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I am but I can get 2 5750's for 255$ now shipped!
Thats 5850 performance!
It would be $280 for you because of tax.

or 2 5770's, 5870 performance for 285$ shipped. Thats not bad..

I must resist!
 

ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
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As far as the 5770s, nah, I can only have 2 cards (4 would need a new motherboard, and with my current choices that have 3 I'd like a slot for a physx card), so if I want to upgrade after them I'll have to sell them, and I'll be losing quite a bit, because I'm thinking by then they'll have dropped in price. I suddenly don't see the point in getting any 5000 series card now when I can get a 4890 for such a low price, again, using your reasoning earlier. Especially getting a dual card set-up that is comprised of mid-range cards right at the beginning of a generation.
 
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happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
14,387
480
126
wait if you spend 11$ more you get 10% off too right!

It gone allready!!! shit
 
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nOOky

Platinum Member
Aug 17, 2004
2,826
1,846
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Good God, just get one 4890 for now and wait it out for a few months. It will play anything at your resolution. Maybe find a good used one and let somebody else take the biggest part of the monetary hit.
:)
 

ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
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Used? Never, there aren't any better prices than $150 used on ebay and the like, and that's new, plus I get the warranty and no hassles. I wouldn't buy a used one unless it was like $100 or something.

And don't you good god me! I'm not the one trying to shove these crossfire configurations and dx11 and all that down my throat! It's all happy medium's fault! All his fault! He..he confused me and made me think things that I shouldn't have thought!

And he probably touched me too!
 
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happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
14,387
480
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Used? Never, there aren't any better prices than $150 used on ebay and the like, and that's new, plus I get the warranty and no hassles. I wouldn't buy a used one unless it was like $100 or something.

And don't you good god me! I'm not the one trying to shove these crossfire configurations and dx11 and all that down my throat! It's all happy medium's fault! All his fault! He..he confused me and made me think things that I shouldn't have thought!

And he probably touched me too!

HAHAHHAA good luck pal!:D
 

nOOky

Platinum Member
Aug 17, 2004
2,826
1,846
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Your first post was 12-4-09, that's two weeks ago! You could have been enjoying something in that time...
 

ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
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n00ky, you think that's bad? Go look up the threads I've started and scroll to the bottom.

I've been "building" this computer of mine since before September! Luckily I have a shitty PC for web browsing, and I've been content with using it as I lazily and very slowly figure out which parts to get. I suppose that's finally going to end within the next week or so, but I was supposed to build a PC by mid September. Indecisiveness + laziness + hating buyer's regret + lots of money + no real incentive to hurry up = What? It's been 3 months already!?!?!

happy, I don't think I need any luck (apart from avoiding DOA), not with this anyway. I mean, I really don't know how I could possibly not be happy with the 4890, good performance, cheap price, not losing much if I choose to sell it and upgrade, it's perfect, and I would've realized that if I wasn't entranced on needlessly-high FPS counts and all that.

I wonder how far I can overclock this thing on stock cooling.
 

blanketyblank

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,149
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Why only 4890 CF? 5770 CF or 5750 CF is about the same price as 2 x 4890s and have the advantage of lower power consumption so you can get away with a weaker PSU.
5850s are about 140 before bing so you can probably get 2 for 280 - (28-56) = 252- 224 depending on how much CB percantage is. I've seen 5870s for as low as 153 on newegg after, but 165 on average so it's still roughly comparable on cost to 4890s CF.

Based on this benchmark I found it looks like 5770CF can beat out a 4870x2 in some tests though losing in others. The test appears to be before new driver though so if rumors are true and 9.12 boosts performance by 5-10% the 5770CF should almost always pull out ahead. Since 5770 loses pretty consistently to 4870 in review I'm guessing the reason it can beat a 4870x2 (which is usually same or better than 4870CF) is due to better scaling. Don't know if it can beat out 4890 CF though since it's not listed in the review.

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=862&p=2
 

ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
0
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Meh, sticking with one 4890.

But thanks for the info, always appreciate someone who's willing to help.

Only thing I'm wondering is, which games are optimized for nvidia cards and which are for ati cards? Batman seems to perform better on a 260 than a 4890 for some reason for instance.

As Batman: Arkham Asylum implements anti-aliasing differently between AMD and NVIDIA cards, this is the one title that we do not test AA on, as doing so produces results that can’t be compared.

That must be why. Interesting. Any other instances of this? And why does it process AA differently? I'll have to google how it differs between the two cards.
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
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Meh, sticking with one 4890.

But thanks for the info, always appreciate someone who's willing to help.

Only thing I'm wondering is, which games are optimized for nvidia cards and which are for ati cards? Batman seems to perform better on a 260 than a 4890 for some reason for instance.

As Batman: Arkham Asylum implements anti-aliasing differently between AMD and NVIDIA cards, this is the one title that we do not test AA on, as doing so produces results that can’t be compared.

That must be why. Interesting. Any other instances of this? And why does it process AA differently? I'll have to google how it differs between the two cards.
I believe that most games are optimized for Nvidia because they throw the most cash at game developers. with ATI it seems to take months for them to get many new releases working correctly. I still recommend ATI in many cases even though I dont personally care to use ATI anymore. I just got tired of waiting for months for things like missing fences in Clear Sky to be resolved.
 
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blanketyblank

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,149
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Batman is optimized for nvidia, because nvidia has some kind of deal with the publisher.
Thus although AMD cards can do AA just as well it is simply not implemented in the game or actually it may even be purposely disabled. I've seen hacks that can fix this though and allow you to get AA using an ATI card in this game. Thus it seems like it's not really a difference in implementation or technology, but simply an underhanded business tactic.
 

ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
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I believe that most games are optimized for Nvidia because they throw the most cash at game developers. with ATI it seems to take months for them to get many new releases working correctly. I still recommend ATI in many cases even though I dont personally care to use ATI anymore. I just got tired of waiting for months for things like missing fences in Clear Sky to be resolved.

Really? But how can you say that if ATI cards of equal price, and even less price perform better in most games compare to nvidia (like the 4890 vs the 260). I mean I could see this with the occasional release (like Batman), but most games?
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
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Really? But how can you say that if ATI cards of equal price, and even less price perform better in most games compare to nvidia (like the 4890 vs the 260). I mean I could see this with the occasional release (like Batman), but most games?
prices change all the time so a direct comparison now isnt the same as even a month ago. heck I bought my gtx260 over a year ago for cheaper than the 4870 512mb was selling for in most cases. and yes the majority of newly released games perform better on Nvidia because they are the ones throwing money at the game makers. by performing better I really mean less technical issues more than just framerates.
 

ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
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That kind of sucks, especially considering I just bought an ATI card.

Anything you can say to put my mind at ease the way it was before you showed up and slapped me across the face? :(
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
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That kind of sucks, especially considering I just bought an ATI card.

Anything you can say to put my mind at ease the way it was before you showed up and slapped me across the face? :(
really if you arent the type of person that gets a game right after its released then in most cases you have nothing to worry about.
 

ChorniyVolk

Senior member
Sep 1, 2009
514
0
0
I am that kind of person, a lot of the time.

How long on average does it take to even it out? A week? 2? A month?
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
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I am that kind of person, a lot of the time.

How long on average does it take to even it out? A week? 2? A month?
you can never tell. the 9.12 drivers that were released today finally fixed the black screen bug in RE 5 so thats THREE months. unfortunately the 9.12 also introduced glitched water in RE 5 according to some guy at techreport. maybe some other ATI users can verify if thats true or not.
 
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