AMD’s Radeon HD 5850: The Other Shoe Drops

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• merin - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link

  Thanks Pastuch :)
  
  I'm in the process of getting a new graphics card, and I'm trying to find the most silent one that doesn't nerf performance from the top cards that much. The 3 cards that I'm considering is:
  
  This 5850 from ATI (probably Sapphire or Asus)
  Sapphire HD4890 Vapor-X
  MSI N275GTX Twin Frozr OC
  
  Any advice?

• Pastuch - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link

  I was looking at the the exact same cards. Both the Twin Forzr GTX275 and the Radeon 4890 vapor-x are VERY QUIET. I would pick based on which games you play. If you have a home theater and audio passthrough is a concern I would lean towards the ATI card. Both of them come pre-overclocked and both have stellar performance. The Twin Frozr is slightly longer in length; however it's power connectors face up (Not out the back of the card like usual).

• Ryan Smith - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link

  Yes. That's the noise of our test rig that we measure at idle when using an entirely passive video card; we can get our rigs down to about 36dB, but that requires removing all the fans other than the CPU fan. Bear in mind that a dead quiet room is 30dB and that we're measuring roughly 6" away from the card, so our methodology may differ from how other people do it.

• merin - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link

  Thank you Ryan!
  So what do you think is the most silent? This 5850 with a reference cooler or the 4890 vapor-x? I find them very hard to compare because of different methodology...
  
  Right now, they only thing in my case that is making noise is the fan on my old 8800GTS, and I'd like my new card to make it completely silent if possible.

• Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link

  Since we haven't tested the Vapor-X, I have no way of knowing.

• MamiyaOtaru - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link

  260 core 216 is using more power yet running cooler with a quieter fan.. would love to see a 5850 with a more efficient cooler

• AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link

  DisplayPort 1.1 vs 1.2 is the difference between PCIe 1.0 vs 2.0. The bandwidth is doubled. Please start stating the version.

• coconutboy - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link

  I didn't read all the comments yet so perhaps this has been mentioned, but where are all the 5850 Xfire results? Hopefully the Crossfire benches weren't done exclusively at 2560x1600? From some of Ryan's text in the article, it seems there were Crossfire results that are accidently missing or got pulled. Stuff like this quote from the Battleforge page 6 text:
  
  

  quote:
  

  ---

  The 5850 Crossfire on the other hand loses once again to the GTX 285 SLI in spite of beating the GTX 285 in a single card matchup.

  ---

  
  
  Yet there are no Xfire results on any of the Battleforge graphs. Hopefully they'll be added later. In the meantime guru3d and HardOCP have Xfire results for those interested.

• coconutboy - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link

  Had a chance to go through all the comments now, seems TheOne pointed out the same thing on page 6 of the comments and Ryan attempted to fix it. The fix still ain't showing up in my browser though.

• Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link

  It's really fixed this time. I had two sets of graphs, one with the CF/SLI cards and one without. I put up the wrong one.