I'm so confused about the 4890 vs 5770 comparisons

[Brunnis]

Except that testing of the 5770 (including Anandtech's review) has shown that its meager 128-bit bus is indeed holding it back and even though the RAM runs at a higher speed, the bus is what is killing its performance. Stupid 128-bit tiny bus ATI stuck it with.

That may be the case, but it really doesn't have anything to do with what I wrote. The HD 5770 does not have double the memory frequency to make up for the lost bus width.

 

[nOOky]

A 5770's core will in most cases overclock to 1000 (check the reviews) which puts it above the performance of a 4870 and nips at the heels of a 4890.

Yes, BFG tested the memory bandwidth theory and it proved false. It's core speed you want and the 5770 overclocked delivers.

Now if they would just bring the price back to 159.99 like it was 2 weeks ago, all would be dandy.

I'm still praying for a 5830 for my next upgrade for ~ 210$.

But, as usual, 4890's overclock very well also, negating the gain of an overclocked 5770.

If only they would lower the price of the 4890's...

 

[Winterpool]

My coworker is building a new Core i5 system and, with about $200 to spend, was torn between the HD 4890, 5770, and GTX 260 (the last one made little sense to me). I found an HIS HD 4890 for $160 on Newegg -- this made up his mind. I see now, however, that the card has sold out. Pity, I was considering buying the card myself for Dragon Age.

 

[AzN]

A 5770's core will in most cases overclock to 1000 (check the reviews) which puts it above the performance of a 4870 and nips at the heels of a 4890.

Yes, BFG tested the memory bandwidth theory and it proved false. It's core speed you want and the 5770 overclocked delivers.

Now if they would just bring the price back to 159.99 like it was 2 weeks ago, all would be dandy.

I'm still praying for a 5830 for my next upgrade for ~ 210$.

Wasn't it supposed to be $150 when it was first released? Damn ATI milking a bit but not like Nvidia.

BFG tests showed avg frame rate but what about minimum frame rate? Bandwidth plays a vital role in minimum frame rates where 4890 has whole lot of. You go back track some reviews of the 5770 vs 4870/4890 and the average frame rate difference and minimum frame rate difference show quite a bit of discrepancy. So if 5770 was 10-15% slower in avg frame rates it might be 25% slower in minimum frame rates which matter more to a gamer than peak frame rates. As Nooky said 4890 also overclock quite well. Combined with amount of bandwidth of 4890 the lead becomes quite larger.

 

[nemesismk2]

Right now the 4890 is usually faster but in the future with driver tweaks the 5770 should be faster. Let's not forget about the 5770 has DX11 while the 4890 is still DX10.1

 

[Patrickz0rs]

Right now the 4890 is usually faster but in the future with driver tweaks the 5770 should be faster. Let's not forget about the 5770 has DX11 while the 4890 is still DX10.1

Driver tweaks lol.

 

[nOOky]

"So here’s the bottom line for the 5770: Unless you absolutely need to take advantage of the lower power requirements of the 40nm process (e.g. you pay a ton for power) or you strongly believe that DirectX 11 will have a developer adoption rate faster than anything we’ve seen before for DirectX, the 1GB 4870 or GTX 260 is still the way to go. Or to put things another way, outside of those two circumstances we’re still at status quo. A 1GB 4870 will continue to be a better choice until the price difference between one of those on sale and a 5770 drops below $10-$15, at which point we could justify rolling the dice and paying a bit more for the 5770. AMD is their own enemy here, which means we aren’t going to be very surprised if we see the 4870 go away very quickly once the 5770 is plentiful."

From the anadtech review. Check out the benchies, it's no where near a 4890, especially since the price has gone up.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3658&p=14

 

[RussianSensation]

But, as usual, 4890's overclock very well also, negating the gain of an overclocked 5770.

If only they would lower the price of the 4890's...

How much lower?

It's priced at $159
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-299-_-Product

 

[evolucion8]

Right now the 4890 is usually faster but in the future with driver tweaks the 5770 should be faster. Let's not forget about the 5770 has DX11 while the 4890 is still DX10.1

I doubt that driver tweaks can do much for the card, at the architecture level, both cards have identical shader/stream processor layout, besides of the differences with DX11 compliance, most of the work was done with the QUEUE processor and the tessellator to accommodate more instructions that came with DX11 plus some other propietary ones, plus other minor tweaks like GPGPU computing, and most of those tweaks are the ones that helps the HD 5870 to scale almost 2x performance compared to the HD 4870, because not always doubling execution resources will warrant a double increase in performance.

The HD 5770 performs so close to the HD 4870 that proves that the HD 4870 isn't bandwidth starved, and both cards are identical with their TMU/Pixel ratio plus computing power, tweaks done at the driver level for the HD 5770 for sure can work with the HD 48x0 series, probably the tweaks can make a difference in DX11 to maximize the efficiency of the resource usage.

 

[Highmodulus]

As noted in another thread, the 5770 and 5750 as both great upgrade cards for box's with smaller power supplies (like mid-level Dell XPS's). The very low watt usage and heat output (see the excellent review here for details) make it a great replacement option for 450 watt PSU boxes or boxes where you do not want to add heat or noise to the system. Seems like the drivers are holding the hard back bit now- but hopefully the 9.11 drivers released today will help.

 

[yacoub]

The other issue to consider is that the 5770 is currently rarely in stock so prices are stupid.

 

[Highmodulus]

Newegg's price wasn't bad, but the 5770's and any 5800 series card in stock is in demand and the prices are rising. Probably not going to improve in the short term till Nvidia ships Fermi's in quantity (I am betting Q2 2010 at the earliest). $169 for a 5770 isn't that bad IMHO.