Are 4850 still worth it?

[james 1]

hi all, I put my system together about three months ago, but I never purchased a graphics card and the shame of playing games on 785g has finally got to me lol.

So when I was looking at graphics card's i was looking at 5770, but I came across a XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB for £70 and seeing that the 5770 cost £130 I could buy two 4850 for a similar price.

my question is that will two 4850 perform the same as a 5770?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I would think that 2 4850's would outperform a 5770 based on how well a game scales in crossfire. You do have to consider the fact that you won't be getting direct x 11 with the 4850's. Not many games utilize it that well currently so it's not a major problem.

 

[AzN]

2 4850 would be much faster than 5770.

Try more like 5850

 

[james 1]

2 4850 would be much faster than 5770.

Try more like 5850

no way!!!

one customer review did say that two will perform similar 5850, but I found that hard to believe.

 

[AzN]

5770 isn't much at all faster fhan 4850. 20% faster maybe.

You do the math.

 

[GaiaHunter]

no way!!!

one customer review did say that two will perform similar 5850, but I found that hard to believe.

Considering that 2 4870 are around if not faster than a 5870, I don't see why.

 

[Attic]

512mb framebuffer FTL

 

[BD231]

I'm using one 4850 and another's just layin here staring at me .... I was considering selling both and getting something new but being that I only need a motherboard with a second PCI-E slot I'm not even going to bother.

 

[faxon]

512mb framebuffer FTL

this. the 2 4850s will be faster than teh 5770 in most games, but unless you're playing at like 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 in games a year or 2 old, you're gonna be limited by the size of your frame buffer with only 512mb

 

[TemjinGold]

OP: If you're looking at the 1gb 4850, they are certainly viable. I wouldn't waste money on the 512meg version though.

 

[james 1]

OP: If you're looking at the 1gb 4850, they are certainly viable. I wouldn't waste money on the 512meg version though.

I can get a HIS ATI Radeon HD 4850 iCooler IV 1024MB for £80 but it does not look as cool as the XFX

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Try get 1GB cards. If you can, then for half the price of a 5770 it's an absolute steal. DO IT.

one customer review did say that two will perform similar 5850, but I found that hard to believe.

The 4850X2, when it was still in retail, walked all over the GTX285. So 2 4850s are about equal with a 5850 in terms of raw performance.

 

[killster1]

what games are going to allow you to use the 1gb while in 4850 crossfire price range? looks like 4850 crossfire stomps on a 1gb gfx280, so what game and res are you speaking of 512mb buffer not good enough? Im curious since have crossfire setups and seems fast to me

 

[blanketyblank]

Plenty of games where 512 is limited at 1920 x 1080. Some games like Crysis of course, but also even games like Dragon Age are limited. I think in DA the limit shows up as a kind of big pause every now and then even though normally the frame rates are quite good in the particular scene. I assume it's the old frame buffer being cleared and written to again.

 

[deimos3428]

I was going to say go with the 5770, but for that price delta the 2x4850 is worth it.

 

[evolucion8]

If a game doesn't scale well with Crossfire, using Crossfire Xtension works like a champ. An HD 4870 in Crossfire is slighly faster in overall, sometimes by a nice margin compared to a single HD 5870, an HD 4850 in Crossfire will smoke any HD 5770.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

what games are going to allow you to use the 1gb while in 4850 crossfire price range? looks like 4850 crossfire stomps on a 1gb gfx280, so what game and res are you speaking of 512mb buffer not good enough? Im curious since have crossfire setups and seems fast to me

1 4850 is in the realm of 1680x1050 or 1440x900. Here, because of the low resolution, frame buffer doesn't matter so much. However, 2 4850s is good for 1920x1080 and even most games at 2560x1600, resolutions which push a lot more pixels and require much more frame buffer for texture and frame data, 512MB becomes a problem.

 

[konakona]

4850s also tend to run hot and loud(er), although I assume you already know this.

I recently picked one up, being aware of the 512mb limitation and all. For a secondary rig paired witha CRT (FP2141SB), it was a much better deal @ $70 than a comparable 5770 for $120+
If prices are similar though, I would have gone 5770 for the lower noise floor alone. I am keeping my eyes peeled for a sale on accelero S1, this 4850 mine could use one.

BTW, is 730/1168 decent clocks for the stock cooler w/o voltmodding?

 

[InfoTiger]

One thing in mind, after you get the 4850,
will you still want to upgrade after two or three months.

 

[james 1]

One thing in mind, after you get the 4850,
will you still want to upgrade after two or three months.

I was under the impression from the other post's that a crossfire setup would last longer than that, seeing that two 4850 are about equal to one 5850

 

[tweakboy]

No, its not worth it at this time of life. Grab a 5870 or go extreme with 5970 blows away 480 trisli , from what Ive read.

 

[james 1]

No, its not worth it at this time of life. Grab a 5870 or go extreme with 5970 blows away 480 trisli , from what Ive read.

lol, if I had the money I would go for one but I only have £150 to spend

 

[darckhart]

512 mb framebuffer will annoy you in a few months. so unless you get 2 up front, best to save your dollars for a few more weeks and get 5850.

 

[GotNoRice]

I run 2x 4850s in my secondary rig and it runs everything very well still. I run Bad Company 2 on there at 1920x1200 at fairly high settings.

Even in situations where you might be limited by the 512mb VRam, you still have a bit of control. You can dial back the AA (or not use AA at all) and you can lower the texture resolution. You can also use the Edge-Detect custom AA filter which will use some of the stream processors on the card to help with AA calculations, taking some of the burden off your cards memory subsystem.

Here are some benchmark results from when I was still using the 4850s in my main system:

 

[killster1]

512 mb framebuffer will annoy you in a few months. so unless you get 2 up front, best to save your dollars for a few more weeks and get 5850.

ya a few more weeks? imo 512mb will not annoy you, and you can always resell the 4850's and buy something else in future. Ya sure crysis wont play with full res and effects i hope you dont try to run crysis with any card with full res etc, i played though it on a 8800gts 512mb just fine back when it came out, and never even heard of dragon age. people at are worried about the 512mb limit dont realize you cant play games at max AA with a 140$ card anyway so who cares. Buy them crossfire them and then sell them in future for a diff card