Is the 6850 a worthy upgrade from 4890?

[shlemielo]

I've had my HD 4890 for a while now, and it's too loud for me. I figure the 6850 isn't a *huge* upgrade performance-wise, and I'm definitely looking for more power efficiency and lower noise levels. I've been browsing the review sites, but it's difficult to find charts that adequately compare the two cards.

Is the 6850 a good upgrade? Selling the 4890 for the 6850 would cost me somewhere around $70. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I game at 1900x1200 with an E8400 @ 3.6.

 

[toyota]

its only going to be about 20-25% faster and thats only in games where your cpu is not a limitation at all.

 

[MegaWorks]

No I would say you need a 5870 to be called a worthy upgrade. I came from a GTX 260 c216 to a 6970, so you may call my setup a worthy upgrade base on the big performance upgrade.

 

[Spikesoldier]

have you considered picking up a second 4890? i doubled up recently for $75.00, and i think the combo approaches 5870 level performance, at the cost of more heat and electricity.

 

[shlemielo]

have you considered picking up a second 4890? i doubled up recently for $75.00, and i think the combo approaches 5870 level performance, at the cost of more heat and electricity.

I've thought about it, but the single 4890 is already very loud.

 

[toyota]

have you considered picking up a second 4890? i doubled up recently for $75.00, and i think the combo approaches 5870 level performance, at the cost of more heat and electricity.

"and I'm definitely looking for more power efficiency and lower noise levels"

 

[hclarkjr]

I've had my HD 4890 for a while now, and it's too loud for me. I figure the 6850 isn't a *huge* upgrade performance-wise, and I'm definitely looking for more power efficiency and lower noise levels. I've been browsing the review sites, but it's difficult to find charts that adequately compare the two cards.

Is the 6850 a good upgrade? Selling the 4890 for the 6850 would cost me somewhere around $70. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I game at 1900x1200 with an E8400 @ 3.6.

i think it would be worthy upgrade as you are getting new card with directx 11 and 2gb video memory which would help you running at the resolution you are using. hell i think it is worth it going from my 4870x2 to it

 

[shlemielo]

i think it would be worthy upgrade as you are getting new card with directx 11 and 2gb video memory which would help you running at the resolution you are using. hell i think it is worth it going from my 4870x2 to it

The 6850 has 2gb of ram?

 

[toyota]

i think it would be worthy upgrade as you are getting new card with directx 11 and 2gb video memory which would help you running at the resolution you are using. hell i think it is worth it going from my 4870x2 to it

a 6850 has 1gb of memory. at 1920x1200 there is no real need for more memory.

 

[hclarkjr]

oops my mistake i thought it said 6950. sorry

 

[hclarkjr]

in that case, it is not worthy upgrade

 

[hclarkjr]

must need classes

 

[shlemielo]

I'm probably going to stick with the 4890 for now then. I'm fairly satisfied with my game performance for now. My system only slows down when I get two monitors going (I like to play HD podcasts on my secondary monitor when I game), and that seems more like a CPU limitation.

 

[RavenSEAL]

20% is a good enough upgrade to me, you'll get DX11.

 

[happy medium]

I would go for the 6870 for $208 shipped on Newegg. (last I checked).

 

[nOOky]

I went from a 4890 to the 6870. Wish I would have waited for the 6950. Now I am considering a GTX570 or a 6950. DX11 was of no importance, and heat and noise are negligible in my case. I'd either go big or go home with a 6950 or GTX570... but I like everything cranked which I still cannot do with the 6870. Sorry if I just confused the matter lol.

 

[GundamF91]

Now's the time to get 5870. I upgraded to it from 4850, and the difference was HUGE!!! Of coures, 4890 was much more powerful than 4850 already.

 

[RavenSEAL]

I went from a 4890 to the 6870. Wish I would have waited for the 6950. Now I am considering a GTX570 or a 6950. DX11 was of no importance, and heat and noise are negligible in my case. I'd either go big or go home with a 6950 or GTX570... but I like everything cranked which I still cannot do with the 6870. Sorry if I just confused the matter lol.

What would it be that you were trying to do lol?

 

[nOOky]

What would it be that you were trying to do lol?

Make a noticeable difference. Going from a 4890 to a 6870 didn't really allow me to make anything at 1920 x 1200 more playable. I think that a 50% jump in fps is more noticeable than a mere 20% and might allow for higher aa/aas etc. I can crank things up, but the fps still drop to much for a decent multiplayer experience so my settings are basically the same.

 

[Attic]

20% is a good enough upgrade to me, you'll get DX11.

I'd personally be disappointed with that. DX11 is great for maintaining a fully capable gaming rig, but given the lack of what DX11 has brought so far to games I think performance has to weigh in a lot more than just a non widely used feature set that looks to be demanding enough to warrant very high performing cards.

For the OP, i'd suggest looking to a 570gtx, 6950, 6970 or wait. If you want an upgrade you can really feel I think you need 50% gain.

 

[raasco]

I'll let you know on Tuesday when mine comes in. I'm doing the upgrade for DX11 and the fact that my 4890 fan noise is finally getting to me.

 

[Powermoloch]

Pros:
- modest upgrade
- less noise
- less PSU requirement
- DX11?

Cons:

none

 

[jacktesterson]

6950

 

[BFG10K]

In terms of performance it probably won’t be a huge upgrade. The card will be vastly quieter though; the 6850 is extremely quiet and I can barely hear it over my case fans.

 

[maniac5999]

I've never played with a 6850, but just reading the reviews, It doesn't look like it would be worth it. Also, look at the numbers:

Your 4890 has 800 shaders, 40 TUs and 16ROPs running at 850mhz.
the 6850 has 960 shaders, 48TUs and 32ROPs running at 775mhz.

Memory wise both cardsare virtually equivalent, so by upgrading you'd get small increases in shaders and Texture Units, and double the ROPs.

What does this mean in real life? well, from Anand's 6850 launch article we can see that in Crysis the 6850 gets 36.1FPS and the 4870 gets 26.8. In BattleForge it's 46.6 v. 38.7fps, and in HAWX it's 88v. 60fps. (all 1920x1200)

Now, both the 4870 and 4890 are the same architecture, but the 4890's 13.3% faster core and 10.6% faster memory give it an advantage, because they're both rarely memory limited I'm going to assume the 4890 is 13.3% faster than the 4870. That gives us:

Game 6850 4890 Advantage
Crysis 36.1 30.4 18.75%
BF 46.6 43.9 6.15%
HAWX 88 68 29.4%
Wolfenstein 75 62.3 20.4%

Clearly there's an improvement there, the important question is if an 18.7% increase is enough for you to upgrade. Personally, I upgrade when I can get a 100% improvement.