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worth upgrading an ati 5850 to a gtx480?

S

stag3

Diamond Member
its 210 shipped from newegg right now for the gtx480.
from what i've read its about 15-20% faster?
 
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.
 
If you can sell your 5870 to bitcoin miners for enough to cover a GTX480, then go for it. Otherwise yeah, get the 7850/70 when they get a bit cheaper.
 
i'd probably just toss my 5850 into my 2nd rig, since that one only has an HD4xxx series in it right now
 
Depends on which one, I didn't see the one you were talking about.

I know they were selling 480 Lightnings for that price for awhile.

If noise is a concern I wouldn't go with a reference blower card, they're all the same, loud.

If power is a concern I'd go 28nm.

A 480 would be considerably faster than 10-15% in some newer DX11 titles, like BF3, and Batman AC. If you are looking at a non reference card they'll typically overclock past 580 performance without much issue. Power though is going to be about 100 watts higher at stock vs a 5870, however those are old reviews. Newer ones show Nvidia was able to get some of the leakage under control and reduce the power draw fairly well. They also use less power the cooler they are, so a good non reference cooler would help mitigate some of the additional power.

If you can get a good price from a bit miner for your card I'd do it, and the card you're looking at is non reference it should tide you over until 28nm refreshes later this year.
 
I'm waiting for the 7870 to drop to $300, myself.

If it was the 570 that was going for ~$220, I'd grab it. The 480 was just too leaky, imo.
 
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stag3 said:
its 210 shipped from newegg right now for the gtx480.
from what i've read its about 15-20% faster?
Click to expand...

I would also consider the 7850 for a tad bit more. You have a lot of overclocking potential on there not to mention cooler running and uses less power.
 
stag3 said:
its 210 shipped from newegg right now for the gtx480.
from what i've read its about 15-20% faster?
Click to expand...

It's much more than 15-20% faster. In fact, versus a stock 5850, it's 25-50% faster: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/295?vs=309

Your overclocked 5850 is about 17% faster than stock, but the gtx480 should be able to match that. So assume you'd be able to maintain a 25-50% advantage.

Is it worth it? Only you can decide if you want more performance. I was in your situation last fall, and I went crossfire. Gets me to about the same power use at load as a 480 and about 75% higher performance over one 5850. Unfortunately, you can't get a 5850 new anymore. But you can sell your 5850 to recoup some of the cost, so the upgrade would actually cost about the same as going crossfire with a used 5850.

For those saying "wait for the 7850", well, we already know the 480 beats the 7850 in just about everything but power/noise/heat. Performance/dollar won't be close to this 480 (which is a reference model, by the way). And no, the 7850 does not have more OC headroom. Don't be confused by cards reaching 1GHz - in percentage terms, it's the same as what most 480s can do.

The one sticking point for me is idle power use - I just don't like the 480's benches for that. Otherwise, this is a killer deal (hence my posting it!).

Deal thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2229638
 
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IMO don't do it. AMD just released a series of new gpu's and Nvidia is about to do the same. Hold for a little bit longer and let prices settle, then buy a card that will not heat up your rig, while having GTX480 or better performance.
 
Maximilian said:
Keep in mind the GTX480 is reputed to be a noisy hot running power hog.
Click to expand...

I need to kill this myth. My PSU definitely sounds like it's puttin in work while gaming with a GTX 480, but as far as noise goes this thing never goes past 60% fan speed if you have good case ventilation, hence the higher typical temps.

At 60% I don't even hear it while gaming, so, whoever is having their 480's turn into jet turbines has some seriously crappy case cooling, as they run darn near silent with the stock cooler in my experience. They overclock great at stock voltage as well.

EDIT: I went from a GTX 460 to 480 and the added memory alone made it worth it. My 460 @ 900mhz gave your 5870 a good run for its money and I can still say it was well worth it. I know everyone is saying new cards are coming out, but prices are going to be messy for a while. You won't come across GTX 480 performance for as cheap as its going now for some time to come in a *new* card so it could be a long wait. If you want better performance in BF3 or any other memory hog titles it's definitely worth a step up if you run a high res monitor.
 
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I just picked up a 2nd hand GTX480 fitted with a Zalman VF3000F for $150, at stock it runs at about 65c and is almost silent. It also overclocks to 900mhz stable which I believe makes it faster than a 580. Sure it uses a ton of power but it's great value for the money.
 
Mezzanine said:
I just picked up a 2nd hand GTX480 fitted with a Zalman VF3000F for $150, at stock it runs at about 65c and is almost silent. It also overclocks to 900mhz stable which I believe makes it faster than a 580. Sure it uses a ton of power but it's great value for the money.
Click to expand...

It only has 32 less shader cores, one less poly engine, same ROPS, bus, and vram as the 580. The per clock difference is minimal. 900 core on my 470 gets me past 580 stock performance, but I'm missing 64 shaders, 8 ROPS, two poly engines, and a slower bus running slower ram.
 
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RavenSEAL said:
Why? Are you looking for your computer to double as a grill?
Click to expand...

The best answer so far in this thread. :thumbsup:

The gtx295 i purchased in 2009 god i hated that one,i hated the whole i7 940 matched with it as well,i had the whole build in a antec 1200 it just seemed at that time we went for the loudest hottest thing we could get.

A 2500k and a 7950/7970 can be housed in a antec 300 build like mine is,and be much cooler then that loud hot ass crap i had stuffed in a antec 1200 back in 2010 LOL.

Love progress.😎 Go green.
 
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lehtv said:
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.
Click to expand...

And that gets to the heart of the problem. For the OP to get a truly legitimate upgrade, he must spend almost $100 more than he probably paid for the HD5850, 2.5 years after the introduction of that card.

Here's another way to think about it:

GTX480 for $210 = 30% faster --> $15 for each percentage point improvement
HD7870 for $350 = 50% faster --> $15 for each percentage point improvement
HD7970 for $550 = 90% faster --> $16 for each percentage point improvement

Guess it just comes down to how much of an improvement you want and how much you can spend.
 
I'm considering getting one. I wanted to get a 28nm card to replace my o/c sli setup. Keep one of the 460's as a dedicated PhysX card. For 210.00, I don't think I'm going to get near gtx 580 power (when 480 o/c). With what is about to be released. I was hopeful that a 300 dollar monster was coming, but that seems uncertain.
 
For me it was worth it moving from two crossfired 5870's to SLI 480's at the recent firesale price. I know a lot of people on here won't like to hear this but after having almost no major driver issues from the ATI/AMD camp for years, I have had nothing but trouble from my crossfire setup the past six months or so. I was finally fed up with it so I jumped on these while I wait on the high end Kepler to arrive. I'm pleased to say that everything I was having an issue with is gone with these. Now that's not to say issues don't exist as I haven't played every game under the sun with these yet, but I've not ran into anything so far. I had a hell of a time getting them to work in SLI initially though, it seems nVidia SLI has some sort of issue with certain Realtek Lan chipset/driver combinations. Worked through it though and now all is fine.

From the limited experience with them I've had so far though I can say average framerates are suprisingly higher (more than I was expecting), minimums slightly higher and oddly maximum is actually a tad bit down from my crossfired Gigabyte Super Overclock 5870's. I haven't tried OC'ing them yet, though I hear later edition 480's have a lot of headroom. *crosses fingers*
 
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I have a single HD5850...getting a GTX 480 would be too incremental a performance upgrade in my opinion.
Course you could get 2 x GTX 470s for teh awesome rockzors uber rig that pwnz all...
or so I've heard....🙄
 
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