worth upgrading an ati 5850 to a gtx480?

[aaksheytalwar]

If the net cost is $210, then probably no. But if after selling your old card you can manage in about $100 total, then probably yes. But IMO at $210 NO, rather spend more for a 7850 or 7870.

I went from a 5850 to 6970 when the 6970 was launched and didn't exactly regret it, so a GTX 480 is also about as fast as a 6970, but it is too late now, rather spend more for a 7850 at least.

 

[stag3]

What resolution are you running?

1920x1200

 

[stag3]

I'd say a 7870 is the minimum you should aim at. Anything less than a 50% boost and the upgrade is a bit meh, in my opinion.

will i be limited by my cpu?

 

[3DVagabond]

I can't imagine buying a 480 when the 7850, a known commodity with tons of reviews to check out, is so soon to be available. The 7850 is so much better of an overall card for not too much more dollars, IMO.

That's only if I had to upgrade right now. We also have Kepler soon to be released and it's worth waiting to see what it brings to the market. Higher performance? Lower prices? Who knows, but better to be safe than sorry, I say. It might only be a couple of days 'til we know.

 

[stag3]

Does your 5850 support voltage control? If so, up it a bit and get 1ghz core.

35% OC is handy for newer games.

i just dl'd the latest afterburner beta and enabled voltage control, stock is 1087.
im at 900/1200 o/c now on stock voltage
what is a safe volt increase to try for 1000/1200?

edit: nm 900/1200 locked up 2 minutes into my wot game

 

[Silverforce11]

Just give it 1.187 vcore it should run 950 easy. Up to 1.2vcore for 1ghz.

5850s are crazy overclockers and at 1ghz, its a 5870 + ~15% which is plenty fast.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

i just dl'd the latest afterburner beta and enabled voltage control, stock is 1087.
im at 900/1200 o/c now on stock voltage
what is a safe volt increase to try for 1000/1200?

edit: nm 900/1200 locked up 2 minutes into my wot game

IIRC something like 1.25 as long as you could keep it cool, although I wouldn't go past 1.2 without some really good cooling, and you really need to keep an eye on your GPU temps and especially your VRM temps.

When I initially did the mod to install an Accelero S1 to my 5850 back in '09 I nearly killed my card because I made the mistake of removing the base-plate after removing the blower/heatsink/shroud, of which there is actually a heatpipe included into the base-plate of the 5850 reference design specifically for cooling the VRMs, and the dinky stick-on heatsinks I stuck on the VRMs simply weren't anywhere good enough to do the job and my video would quickly corrupt after running some stress tests. Almost was too late before I figured out my VRM temps were sky high, well over 100C. Luckily I caught my error and was able to reinstall the base plate back on to keep the RAM and VRMs properly cooled, had to mod the S1 a bit more to fit with the base plate, but it wasn't anything bending and trimming a few fins with a pair of scissors couldn't handle.

 

[skipsneeky2]

i just dl'd the latest afterburner beta and enabled voltage control, stock is 1087.
im at 900/1200 o/c now on stock voltage
what is a safe volt increase to try for 1000/1200?

edit: nm 900/1200 locked up 2 minutes into my wot game

Good luck i hear the 5850 is pretty legendary for clocking.

 

[lavaheadache]

umm, A gtx 480 is way more powerful than a 5850. I don't know what some of these guys are trying to sell. Coming from a guy that has owned 5870, 480 and 580... A 480 is a medium to large upgrade from a 5850. Call it 25-50% easily. To me that is huge. You minimum frame rate will definately go up by a sizable margin. People want to give credit to the 5850 for being a great overclocker, they should also give credit to the 480 as well cause both of mine overclocked like champs and scale well too with the oc.

 

[nemesismk2]

Why? Are you looking for your computer to double as a grill?

I found this very funny

 

[BFG10K]

The GTX480 is a furnace that sounds like a jet turbine. There’s no good reason to get one with the GTX570 being available.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

$100 cheaper sounds like a good reason to me, an additional 256mb of vram over the 570 doesn't hurt either.

You'd probably get a better gpu than what they released as, since those are gone and Nvidia was able to seemingly improve the process.

Fun fact: 480s draw less power in furmark than 580s.

 

[Silverforce11]

Fun fact: 480s draw less power in furmark than 580s.

That can't be true.

NV claims gtx580 is 250W TDP, its the official specs. It's meant to be using less power than the gtx480.

Are you saying NV makes up stuff?

 

[YBS1]

The GTX480 is a furnace that sounds like a jet turbine. There’s no good reason to get one with the GTX570 being available.

Mine is no louder than my 5870's were. Of course the fans don't seem to really ramp up that much, maybe they run cooler than the earlier batches. Yeah, and the 100 dollars thing.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

 

[BallaTheFeared]

That can't be true.

NV claims gtx580 is 250W TDP, its the official specs. It's meant to be using less power than the gtx480.

Are you saying NV makes up stuff?

The 480 has a 250W TDP thou? I think you mean 244w TDP, the 580 will use less power in games though... Because it has a superior vapor chamber cooling system.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-480-liquid-cooling-danger-den-review/9

 

[Termie]

A few graphs to ponder:





I do hope they got the power consumption numbers under control since TechPowerUp tested their GTX480 sample...

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I haven't seen anything from the OP indicating power concerns.

Power/heat are easily manageable, and a 480 will cream a 5850 in modern titles, especially those that feature tessellation.

I don't know if AMD ever fixed their CF issues with 5xxx series, but my 470s @ 900 core are considerably faster than 5850 CF @ 1000 core in Heaven with normal tess, they're 43% faster @ 1080p.

If it is a big concern, unscrew a light bulb and stop worrying about it.

 

[hdfxst]

look at my screenshot again(or my specs below),i'm not running the 5850 @1000.and i'm being held back by the 5830 running in an x4 slot

 

[Vesku]

If it was a 560TI 448 or a 570 I would not hesitate. A GTX 480, though, I'd probably hold out for a 7850 or the Kepler equivalent $250 card.

 

[Grooveriding]

For $200, those 480s on newegg are the best buy going for price/perf right now, especially if you get one that can take a 150mhz overclock. That said, they are loud and run very hot. That furmark graph is misleading, the 580 throttles in furmark because nv added a throttle to their drivers with the 5xx series when it detects furmark being run.

 

[omeds]

I moved from Tri 5850 to Tri 580 and performance just about doubled in most games. I guess you can knock 10-15% off for the 480.

 

[bryanW1995]

Not really no, its up to you though if that 15-20% is worth it.

Keep in mind the GTX480 is reputed to be a noisy hot running power hog.

Mine is excellent, much much better than what I expected after all the warnings I received about how bad it was supposed to be. And I'm extremely sensitive to noise, my last card was a gtx 460.

 

[ZimZum]

Fun fact: 480s draw less power in furmark than 580s.

Furmark is completely irrelevant as a power consuption, TDP benchmark for the 580. Nvidia throttles performance when Furmark is detected.

As for FurMark, due to NVIDIA’s power throttling we’ve had to get a bit creative. FurMark is throttled to the point where the GTX 580 registers 360W, thanks to a roughly 40% reduction in performance under FurMark. As a result for the GTX 580 we’ve swapped out FurMark for another program that generates a comparable load, Program X. At this point we’re going to decline to name the program, as should NVIDIA throttle it we may be hard pressed to determine if and when this happened.

In any case, under FurMark & X we can see that once again NVIDIA’s power consumption has dropped versus the GTX 480, this time by 27W or around 6%. NVIDIA’s worst case scenario has notably improved, and in the process the GTX 580 is back under the Radeon HD 5970 in terms of power consumption. Thus it goes without saying that while NVIDIA has definitely improved power consumption, the GTX 580 is still a large, power hungry GPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/nvidias-geforce-gtx-580/17

 

[Maximilian]

I haven't seen anything from the OP indicating power concerns.

Power/heat are easily manageable, and a 480 will cream a 5850 in modern titles, especially those that feature tessellation.

I don't know if AMD ever fixed their CF issues with 5xxx series, but my 470s @ 900 core are considerably faster than 5850 CF @ 1000 core in Heaven with normal tess, they're 43% faster @ 1080p.

If it is a big concern, unscrew a light bulb and stop worrying about it.

Hmm but there are no modern titles that a 5850 cannot handle.

 

[YBS1]

Hmm but there are no modern titles that a 5850 cannot handle.

I'm pretty sure I can setup a situation in which SLI 480's give less than ideal performance, and I'm damn certain there are plenty of situations a single 5850 will be hobbled to the point of being unplayable. No such thing as too much performance.

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