5850 Question

[Genx87]

I am looking at grabbing a 5850 since the 465\470 from a power perspective doesnt work for me. Yeah I know, a couple of months ago I made an argument about high end power supplies. Well the one in my machine is 500 watts, bought in 2006, and only has 36 amps on the 12v rail. So that puts me outside the recommended power envelope of Fermi. And I dont feel like dropping 100 bucks on a 750 watt PSU. I am eating crow today

Anyways I have an itch to upgrade from my 4850 so the 5850 seems like a logical choice given my system situation. However I am looking at the cards and wondering about the cooling on these things. One complaint I have about my 4850 is it uses a cooling system like the old 6800s. Basically a fan with a heatsink that spits the hot air into my case. One thing I loved about my 8800GTS 640 was it pushed the hot air out the back of the case. The pictures of the 5850 I am looking at looks like my 8800GTS. But there seems to be a gap between the cover and what looks like an exhaust grill. Do these things push the air out of the case or is the cover just for show?

This is the card I am looking at.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102885

 

[Lonyo]

Is there a reason to go with the stock sort of design (e.g. for the outputs)?
There are a couple which look more able to push air out the back because the grill covers the entire second slot (but they have DVI+HDMI+DP rather than dual DVI+HDMI+DP), and are about the same price.

 

[Genx87]

Honestly I picked that one because I have heard good things about Saphire and it comes with Modern Warfare II

But they all seem to have the same cover except an XFX card that has some silly looking heatsink on it. I assumed they were all using the reference design for the cooler. I will look to see if there is a more closed design.

 

[Lonyo]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-500-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-375-_-Product (OOS at Newegg)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2943

Compared to the reference cooler it’s also open-ended, meaning unlike the reference cooler it’s not a blower that exhausts all air outside the case.

So basically the reference cooler should exhaust at least some air through the small grill (which is the model you linked to, and most others it seems).

 

[Termie]

I have the reference cooler on my 5850 and it pushes plenty of hot air out of that tiny slot, so I'm pretty happy with it. While I agree with Lonyo that a larger vent would be ideal, the one that has one (MSI) has an open cooler design that doesn't even utilize the vent.

By the way, I too have limited myself by sticking with my fantastic circa-2006 500w Seasonic power supply, and I've never regretted it. The thing has powered three different video cards at this point (x1900xt, 8800gt, and 5850), and I've never felt that upping the power envelope was necessary to increase performance. You'll love the increase from 8800gt/4850-class performance to 5850-class performance, and you'll love even more that it will use less power at idle than your 4850, while using only slightly more at load.

 

[Genx87]

Cool, thanks for the information.

I cant believe it has been 4 years since I bought my PSU.

 

[Genx87]

Well, long story short. I balked on this purchase due to my cars AC unit having issues and a leaky radiator. But after going to the shop a few days after this thread everything checked out fine. But my upgrade itch didnt go away. So I ended up reversing course because I wanted to try the green team this round. I got an Antec TP 750 + EVGA GTX 470. And will overclock my E8400 to 4ghz. Right now it is as 3.6Ghz

I want to again thank the people who took time to answer my questions about the 5850.

I got the card yesterday and rebuilt my machine from scratch. Took a couple hours. The only game I tried was WoW. Everything is maxed to the hilt for graphics. Everywhere but Dalaran was crystal smooth. Dal was around 35-40fps with some dips in the high 20s. But that is much higher than the 20-23fps I used to get. And no more dips into the low 30s and 20 fps in some areas. The game appears capped at 60fps. Noise is nearly non-existent, especially compared to my old 4850. That card was noisy as hell when the fan spun up. And my case runs cooler because the card spits the heat out the back instead of into the case like my old 4850.

I installed EVGAs precision and will check out gaming temps. I installed it after a gaming session but think I caught it on the downward trend. It was showing a GPU temp of 71c and it finished I think right around 55c? Which is cooler than my old 8800 GTS 640. Which I think idled right around 65-67C, though it gamed at about 68C. I suspect this one should reach into the high 80s low 90s while gaming right?

I am tempted to stick this on my 67" DLP downstairs.

 

[jtisgeek]

Yeah now your E8400 even at 4.0 ghz become your real bottle neck but nice to see your seeing good results from your upgrade.

 

[Genx87]

Yeah, it will be a bottleneck. But when overclocked compared to stock i5s and i7s I cant justify the cost to make that upgrade. Ram + MB + CPU. Im impressed with this E8400 though. I have had it for 2 years and overclocked it can still be somewhat competitive with the newest chips.

I may start a tick\tock upgrade cycle. A year from now grab sandybridge.

Ill install other games tonight.

Also the advances in power supplies is pretty cool. I liked being able to allocate a single 12v rail per PCIE connector to the card.

 

[MagickMan]

It's not that bad, I doubt you'll notice any negative performance aspects at all. Everyone told me that 5850 CF would be a waste with my OC'd Q9550, but so far I've been very impressed.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I really can't blame you for getting a 470. I wouldn't pay $300 for a 5850 when last week I saw a 470 on newegg for $296. The purchase of the new power supply to me was needed. Your old psu was 4 years old and only 500w. What did you end up paying for the power supply and 470?

 

[Genx87]

Total cost was 471 shipped from newegg. I wanted EVGA, I have used their cards in the past(5900,6800,8800 GTS 640). The PSU I did some research. And eventhough I have had utterly craptacular luck with Antec PSUs, went with the TP750. I wanted min 750watt because I plan to use this on my tock upgrade next year with a sandybridge based CPU.

Well outside of my range for what I originally planned(300ish). But decided, this is my hobby. 500 bucks a year is actually a relatively cheap hobby by most standards

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I've been using my antec quattro 850w for going on two years and no problems. Yeah Evga rocks. When I found a superclocked 470 for $280 bucks I jumped on it. Top quality stuff you got there.