ASUS Radeon EAH5850

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] I hate to admit it, but despite the fact that AMD launched its ATI Radeon HD 5000 series in late September, which included the HD 5870 and HD 5850, we haven't had a review of the latter card up to this point. Thanks to our friends at ASUS, we received their version of the reference card a couple of weeks ago, and had a blast putting it through its paces. It never ceases to impress me just how much value can be found in GPUs today, and the HD 5850 is no exception. Take for example the HD 4870, or even the HD 4850. Released last June, these cards were priced at $299 and $199, respectively, and they were fast. So fast, in fact, that the HD 4870 in particular put NVIDIA's GTX 260, at $100 more, to shame. It was a very interesting time in the graphics card world, to say the least. Today, we have the HD 5870, which costs 33% more than the launch HD 4870, but is twice as powerful. The benefits of course don't end there, though. Launch HD 4000 cards had a major issue... heat. Even at idle, the GPU cores could sit at 80°C, and any way you look at it, that's insane. Those problems are no more when looking at the HD 5000 series, because not only have the temperatures dropped significantly, but the power consumption as well (we're talking 80W idle to 17W idle... that's beyond impressive). If the theme isn't obvious enough, the ATI HD 5000 series of cards are impressive in almost all regards. They're so good, that it's beginning to become a little difficult holding out for NVIDIA's Fermi, to see what its striking back with. If you'll recall, AMD trampled on NVIDIA's parade last summer, and if the green team is to be believed, we might see the opposite thing happen when Fermi gets here - and I can't wait. Closer Look. But for now, we have AMD's line-up, and there's little reason to complain. At the high-end, as mentioned, is the HD 5870, which carries an SRP of $379. Sadly, most e-tailers are pricing them more towards $400, but even at that price-point, the cards can be considered a relative bargain. The next step down is the HD 5850, one that has slower overall clock speeds and about 9% less stream processors. The differences aren't stark, but the price is much lower, at $259 SRP. Both of these cards might be the best out there right now, but both are plagued with availability issues. There seemed to be ample supply at first, but that went downhill fast. Today, you're lucky to find either in stock, and the only way to actually get one is to keep checking back to various e-tailers every day. I'm hoping the situation changes soon, but it's unfortunate that AMD didn't better plan this out. The company wanted to beat NVIDIA, but if gamers can't purchase the cards, it's a problem. As always, below is AMD's current GPU line-up. Some cards aren't so relevant today thanks to newer releases, such as some select cards from the 4000 series, but all are still available for purchase. AMD's next addition will be its "HD 5970", the X2 Hemlock card. Model Core MHz Mem MHz Memory Bus Width Processors Radeon HD 5870 850 1200 1024MB 256-bit 1600 Radeon HD 5850 725 1000 1024MB 256-bit 1440 Radeon HD 5770 850 1200 1024MB 128-bit 800 Radeon HD 5750 700 1150 512 - 1024MB 128-bit 720 Radeon HD 4890 850 - 900 975 1024MB 256-bit 800 Radeon HD 4870 750 900 512 - 2048MB 256-bit 800 Radeon HD 4850 625 993 512 - 1024MB 256-bit 800 Radeon HD 4770 750 800 512MB 128-bit 640 Radeon HD 4670 750 900 - 1100 512 - 1024MB 128-bit 320 Radeon HD 4650 600 400 - 500 512 - 1024MB 128-bit 320 The EAH5850 ASUS sent us is based on ATI's reference model, so there's no fancier cooler, nor much of anything else. As I touched on in our review of Sapphire's Vapor-X HD 5870, not many companies have opted to dedicate much time or money to ATI's latest cards simply because of their availability. It makes no sense to do so when no one can buy them, and it may very well be another month or two before that situation changes. Like most other launch HD 5000 cards, ASUS' includes a voucher to download Dirt 2 (via Steam) when it comes out. If that's a game you want to acquire to begin with, and you factor the price of what it would be in conjunction to what the GPU itself costs, the card ends up being an even greater value at the end of the day, despite the price-gouging by various e-tailers. Another sweet addition to ASUS' cards is "Smart Doctor", an overclocking tool that allows control over the voltage, allowing for even greater overclocks. I'll touch on that a bit in our overclocking section. As seen below, ASUS' card here sticks to the reference design (see? I wasn't lying), and not too much is wrong with that. It might appeal to some, it might not to others. What's important is that the design works. This is the first generation of graphics cards where I don't feel like I have to put down the design, because these cards don't overheat like the older ones, so even as a reference design, it's going to allow stable operation, and some overclocking headroom. If you've seen any HD 5000 series cards before, the back plate of this one won't be too surprising. There are two DVI-D ports, along with an HDMI and DisplayPort. Of course, if you're still using a VGA monitor (I hope not by now), an adapter is included in the box. Of course, like the rest of AMD's current line-up, this card supports CrossFireX with another HD 5000 series card. As the card is based on a reference design, there's not much else to say. Of all the launch cards, what your choice should boil down to is whether or not a game is included, the company's warranty policy and also whether or not you use the included bundled apps. ASUS' tools and utilities tend to usually look horrible where UI is concerned, but they're useful. With that said, let's get a move on into our look at our test rig and then the performance results. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Test System & Methodology] At Techgage, we strive to make sure our results are as accurate as possible. Our testing is rigorous and time-consuming, but we feel the effort is worth it. In an attempt to leave no question unanswered, this page contains not only our testbed specifications, but also a fully-detailed look at how we conduct our testing. For an exhaustive look at our methodologies, even down to the Windows Vista installation, please refer to this article. Test Machine. The below table lists our testing machine's hardware, which remains unchanged throughout all GPU testing, minus the graphics card. Each card used for comparison is also listed here, along with the driver version used. Each one of the URLs in this table can be clicked to view the respective review of that product, or if a review doesn't exist, it will bring you to the product on the manufacturer's website. Component Model Processor Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition - Quad-Core, 3.33GHz, 1.33v Motherboard Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME - X58-based, F7 BIOS (05/11/09) Memory Corsair DOMINATOR - DDR3-1333 7-7-7-24-1T, 1.60 ATI Graphics Radeon HD 5870 1GB (Sapphire) - Catalyst 9.10 Radeon HD 5850 1GB (ASUS) - Catalyst 9.10 Radeon HD 5770 1GB (Reference) - Beta Catalyst (10/06/09) Radeon HD 4890 1GB (Sapphire) - Catalyst 9.8 Radeon HD 4870 1GB (Reference) - Catalyst 9.8 Radeon HD 4770 512MB (Gigabyte) - Catalyst 9.8 NVIDIA Graphics GeForce GTX 295 1792MB (Reference) - GeForce 186.18 GeForce GTX 285 1GB (EVGA) - GeForce 186.18 GeForce GTX 275 896MB (Reference) - GeForce 186.18 GeForce GTX 260 896MB (XFX) - GeForce 186.18 GeForce GTS 250 1GB (EVGA) - GeForce 186.18 Audio On-Board Audio Storage Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 Power Supply Corsair HX1000W Chassis SilverStone TJ10 Full-Tower Display Gateway XHD3000 30" Cooling Thermalright TRUE Black 120 Et cetera Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit When preparing our testbeds for any type of performance testing, we follow these guidelines: General Guidelines No power-saving options are enabled in the motherboard's BIOS. Internet is disabled. No Virus Scanner or Firewall is installed. The OS is kept clean; no scrap files are left in between runs. Hard drives affected are defragged with PerfectDisk 10 prior to a fresh benchmarking run. Machine has proper airflow and the room temperature is 80°F (27°C) or less. To aide with the goal of keeping accurate and repeatable results, we alter certain services in Windows Vista from starting up at boot. This is due to the fact that these services have the tendency to start up in the background without notice, potentially causing slightly inaccurate results. Disabling "Windows Search" turns off the OS' indexing which can at times utilize the hard drive and memory more than we'd like. Services Disabled Prior to Benchmarking PerfectDisk 10. Windows Defender. Windows Error Reporting Service. Windows Event Log. Windows Firewall. Windows Search. Windows Update. For more robust information on how we tweak Windows, please refer once again to this article. Game Titles. At this time, we currently benchmark all of our games using three popular resolutions: 1680x1050, 1920x1080 and also 2560x1600. 1680x1050 was chosen as it's one of the most popular resolutions for gamers sporting ~20" displays. 1920x1080 might stand out, since we've always used 1920x1200 in the past, but we didn't make this change without some serious thought. After taking a look at the current landscape for desktop monitors around ~24", we noticed that 1920x1200 is definitely on the way out, as more and more models are coming out as native 1080p. It's for this reason that we chose it. Finally, for high-end gamers, we also benchmark using 2560x1600, a resolution that's just about 2x 1080p. For graphics cards that include less than 1GB of GDDR, we omit Grand Theft Auto IV from our testing, as our chosen detail settings require at least 800MB of available graphics memory. Also, if the card we're benchmarking doesn't offer the performance to handle 2560x1600 across most of our titles reliably, only 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 will be utilized. Because we...

ASUS Radeon EAH5850

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Rob Williams