5850, still rockin on.

[sxegloxx]

I agree.

+1 Looks like i'm going to have to wait for another 4 years.

 

[chihlidog]

See sig - that rig is still my daily driver. I'm looking at going to a 7970 in February (income tax time) but my 5850 is still rockin'. I seriously think the 5850s/5870s will be regarded 5 or 10 years down the road as absolutely legendary.

 

[Vdubchaos]

I've been wondering how far behind the curve I am with my 5850. I found this article and I'm not sure if I should be happy that my 5850 still competes so well with todays x800 series or sad that it's been two years and it still competes with AMD's x800 series.
I just though this was funny.
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/36269-amd-radeon-hd-7850-vs-6850-vs-5850-clocks/

This is a question only YOU can answer based on YOUR needs.

To be honest, gaming industry graphics progress hasn't progressed much past 3-5 years so personally I simply can't justify ANY kind of graphics card upgrades in very near future.

Game industry just sucks IMO

 

[RaistlinZ]

Yeah, I agree. It's a little disheartening, but I do look forward to the next gen. The 6850 that I had was great, I handed it down to my GF for her PC (she likes Skyrim and a few others). It was slightly disappointing to see the 6950 slower than a 5870 in some situations, and even no faster than a good OC'd 5850. Until the recent AMD price cuts, there was STILL nothing under $400 worth upgrading from a 58xx/68xx/69xx to. Even now it's a bit dicey at the ~$200 price range. It's a sad change from when say the X850 to X18XX was giant, the HD4870 to HD5870 was epic, etc.

What we got this gen were huge prices and relatively small increases in performance/$, and in many respects, a decline in performance/$.

Yup, but it's our own fault. We keep buying them anyway.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Stock cooling. Most 5850s (reference) can handle at least 950mhz with ease.

I'm about to attempt this. What voltage should I try? 1.15v?

 

[ZipSpeed]

1.15V is a good starting point. Unfortunately for my 5850, anything over 900 MHz at any voltage and it starts complaining.

 

[wirednuts]

7950... x800.... wtf? we had these video cards years and years ago. did someone flood the video card manufacturing plants or something? did they start selling eachothers model numbers because they couldnt think of any different ones? so confusing

 

[ShreddedWheat]

Got 5850 for $300 about 2.5 years ago. Last xmas picked up another new from 1saleaday for $115...crossfire ....plenty fast...don't plan to upgrade for a few more years for 1080p rez

 

[ShreddedWheat]

Haven't oced yet...crossfire fast enough for now...want longevity...then oc later

 

[Blitzvogel]

1.5v @ 950 MHz..../crashed...

1.6v perhaps?

I almost want to recall that 925 MHz was the fastest short spurt OC I've done with the card, and that was a while back.....

900 MHz was working great though at 1.5v. I've been playing BF3 MP for the past hour and a half and boy does it make gameplay better. It's smooth as butter with mostly high settings, motion blur, but no MSAA.

 

[Termie]

1.5v @ 950 MHz..../crashed...

1.6v perhaps?

I almost want to recall that 925 MHz was the fastest short spurt OC I've done with the card, and that was a while back.....

900 MHz was working great though at 1.5v. I've been playing BF3 MP for the past hour and a half and boy does it make gameplay better. It's smooth as butter with mostly high settings, motion blur, but no MSAA.

I assume you mean 1.15, not 1.5. Don't try 1.5v, you'll kill your card. You'll need much more than 1.15 though for 950 though. I'd say maybe 1.175 to start.

 

[Blitzvogel]

lol whoops yeah, I meant 1.15v, but I'll give 1.175 a try.

 

[SlowSpyder]

See sig - that rig is still my daily driver. I'm looking at going to a 7970 in February (income tax time) but my 5850 is still rockin'. I seriously think the 5850s/5870s will be regarded 5 or 10 years down the road as absolutely legendary.

Honestly there were three legendary cards, in my opinion. The Radeon 9700, the GeForce 8800, and the Radeon 5850/5870.

Here we are three years later and the 5800 cards can still provide very solid performance even in the newest games, often even with settings turned up a bit. Other than games that use extreme tessellation, the 58xx cards have aged very gracefully.

 

[WMD]

1.5v @ 950 MHz..../crashed...

1.6v perhaps?

I almost want to recall that 925 MHz was the fastest short spurt OC I've done with the card, and that was a while back.....

900 MHz was working great though at 1.5v. I've been playing BF3 MP for the past hour and a half and boy does it make gameplay better. It's smooth as butter with mostly high settings, motion blur, but no MSAA.

The max is 1.3v. How did you get 1.5v? For 950mhz try 1.175v to 1.2v. That's what the 6870 use as stock voltage. Try to get the memory up over 1200 as well. Btw even at 900mhz it's already 15% - 20% faster than a 6870 without tessellation.

 

[Tarvaln]

Just some notes to those trying to overclock an Asus 5850.

I was able to get a stable overclock with the 12.8 CCC Overdrive option. 885 Core Clock, 1200 Memory clock. I ran benchmarks with "Sleeping Dogs" anything higher on the core clock crashed my game.

A side effect I noticed is the lower 1/5 of my screen now flickers when objects are manipulated on screen or video is playing. It is rather annoying. Does anyone know of a way to fix that?


Now for some bitching:

First: Asus software sucks. Smart Doctor would not run on my system. The common internet answer to that was "Well, that sucks." GPU Tweak is god damn horrible. I downloaded the latest version on their website. The site you download it from is in Japanese by the way. I installed it and the program would not display anything. When I clicked the program it said it was already running. No icons, nothing in my notifications. I had to open task manager and hunt for the stupid process to disable it. So I go on the forums and one persons says "Hey, try the new version 2.2.0 it's not on the website. So I download that. Also, each install requires a reboot. I install this new version and same issue. After some forum digging there is a suggestion to use an older version 2.0.83. So I download and install that. And the damn thing pops up after the reboot. WOOT! Then I look at the settings, change a few things, then I changed my mind and I hit the "default" button and WINK, both screens goes black. I though "lolz, silly program" and reset my comp. Then I get the no-post beep and I about had a fit. I thought I bricked my card just by reverting setting I didn't even apply. I turned off my pc in some foolish thought that maybe it will come back on with a cold boot. To my relieve it did. Comp boots and the GPU Tweak loads. I thought maybe it's a bug with that button. I won't push it again. So this time I decide to just increase my core clock to 800. I did the same with CCC before I tried this program. I hit the apply button and... both screens go black. Son of a bitch. I cold booted my comp again and uninstalled that horrible useless program.

Second: As far as I know it is difficult or impossible to overvolt a non-reference 5850. I could not get it to work after multiple attempts with multiple programs like Smart Doctor, GPU Tweak (both Asus programs), and Afterburner. I changed the UnofficialOverclockingMode to 1 and it still wouldn't let me change the voltage.

Third: It is hard for me to tell what my voltage is. GPU-Z 0.6.4 says it is 1.0866 when idle and 1.1866 on load. GPU Tweak (may it burn in hell) says it's a constant 1.187 and the slider was at "max". MSI Afterburner won't display it at all. Maybe that is the highest it will go? I read that someone got theirs to 1.2 and that 1.3 is the max. Not sure if that's true though.

 

[Maximilian]

I take it RBE only works on reference 58xx cards?

After dicking around with MSI afterburner (crap IMO) RBE was a godsend to overclock my 5850.

 

[Modular]

5850 owner here, which I picked up for $150 like a year or so ago. I never spend more than $200 on a GPU, but this one has been probably the best purchase I've ever made.

Same here. Grabbed it new from newegg for 139 I believe a little over a year ago now. I game @ 1680 x 1050, still so I doubt I'll upgrade soon.

 

[Zanovar]

One of my fave cards of all time,rock solid at 950/1250 for years.Still rockin in my dads rig.

 

[Chaptorial]

Had my 5870 for almost 3 years and just yesterday upgraded to a 7970. Felt I got my money's worth on it as it lasted as long as it did and now with the new card being able to play on ultra with everything on in BF3 has been a blast.

 

[MrK6]

I have a friend still gaming on a 5850 @ 2560x1440, still running GW2 fine even on a Q6600 to boot. I built him a new rig with a 3770K and GTX 680 but we're waiting on the power supply to come in to finish it.

 

[codyray10]

Visiontek 5850 (non-reference) here. Stays at 800/1100. Any extra voltage and it crashes just about instantly. Still runs everything I play just fine. I picked it up here on FS/T forum for less than $100, ~6mos ago.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

See sig - that rig is still my daily driver. I'm looking at going to a 7970 in February (income tax time) but my 5850 is still rockin'. I seriously think the 5850s/5870s will be regarded 5 or 10 years down the road as absolutely legendary.

Only reason I upgraded by 5870 is because I had the upgrade itch. Not because it didn't offer me enough performance.

I should probably sell it while I can still get something for it.

 

[Insomniator]

If you look at the newest toms gpu guide, you can see how the value has decreased over the past few years. Granted they don't list the lowest possible prices but the 'best' for ~$170 is a GTX560 or 6870.

Both my 470 and a 5850 perform better than those cards and could be had for ~$200, 2 years ago (mine was $202 in November 2010).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-4.html

 

[SPBHM]

it's a good card, comparable to the GTX 560 BUT, it seems to struggle to keep up with the newer VGAs in DX11... and this tend to be a bigger problem in future games...

it's slower than a $100 7750 in Batman and Civ5
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/512?vs=614

 

[Tarvaln]

For those interested in overclocking the 5850 here are a few notes with a little bit of testing. I've only tested my card. It is listed in my sig.

My highest stable overclock is 849 Core Clock / 1125 Memory Clock. I was able to run at 885 Core clock but after 2 hours of gameplay it would freeze. Any adjustment in memory clock would cause my game to freeze almost instantly.

I have not been able to raise my voltage on this card. No program I know will allow me to do it due to different reasons.

The programs I know that could do this are:

Asus Smart Doctor (Cannot get this program to run. I've tried multiple versions and a few other things.)

Asus Tweak GPU (I can only get the 2.0.8 version to run but it crashes with any adjustment.)

MSI Afterburner (Runs great but I cannot get the voltage option to work. I believe this is due to my card. I *think* it's a non reference and Afterburner cannot adjust the volts on it.)

If anyone can recommend a program to raise my voltage I would appreciate it. I do not want to flash my card bios.