5850MR and 5870MR - Performance difference and overclocking options?

Long story short, I prefer almost everything about the HP Envy 17 over the Asus G73jh, except the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 in the G73jh. How much gaming performance difference would there be between these two (both GDDR5), if all other specs are the same?

Also, in the HP Envy 17, would I be able to overclock the 5850 to 5870 speeds easily, without frying anything? Thanks.

 

The difference between the two shouldn't be big at all, the 5850 is just a 11% downclocked 5870 after all, so I assume 5870 has an edge of around 10% over 5850, in many cases it should be even less.

About overclocking the 5850 to 5870 speeds, it all depends on your luck really, if you got a quality piece of silicon, you will even overclock it beyond 5870 speed, however you may not be able to overclock at all if you got bad luck.

 

Isn't the HD 5850 GDDR3 only?

 

only Acer's are using GDDR3.

Yes, the performance difference is not that big, around 8-10%. Yes, it can be OC to 5870MR level, then again, 5870MR can be OCed further as well, so the difference will always be there.

 

yes.. i would say the envy won't be very overclockable.. it also wouldn't have that good cooling system with thin chasis, it is suicide to OC IMO so get a sager , alienware or asus.

 

The 5870 will be able to clock higher even though it's the same core because they use the better ones of the bunch for the higher clocked models.

 

Well they will do some binning depending on what comes out of the fabs, it really depends on yields however.

 

Yeah not much difference between two. But problem is the Envy and MSI that use 5850 really dont' have any room at all for O/C, the cooling system already at it's limit.

 

I am confused, did the OP say he prefers HP's over Asus?

 

Take it easy- he's just saying he likes the particular models and didn't make any blanket statements about their respective brands

I would have to agree that the Envy 17 couldn't produce viable conditions for OC-ing. Not only is the interior cramped, but the 17 was tweaked just enough to run efficiently with ONE fan. IF you decided to OC the gpu off such enviornments, overheating of the card won't be your only concern...

 

I have owned the 5850 in the Alienware M15x and 5870 in the Clevo W870cu, the 5850 I could OC 24/7 stable t 775/1100 (625/1000 stock) and the 5870 to 900/1100 stable. The difference is the 5850 is voltage capped, I believe if you had the cooling and could up he voltage, they are pretty much the same card. Now regarding the cooling in the envy 17 I have no idea what it can handle, but OCing to 5870 levels has virtually no difference in temps. At OCed speeds the 5850 hit 8400 vantage gpu and the 5870 hit 9400 vantage gpu.

 

Indeed its the same with the 5770 and 5750 desktop chips.

 

In this case I have to agree with the Envy over an Asus. It looks like a high quality build and thin and light unlike the bulky machines that Asus puts out.

 

im preety sure the envy has more than one fan cos the envy 15 did and its smaller. the cooling seems quite good on them for something that easy enough to carry round unlike the ugly brick of a G73

 

If you want a thin notebook with gaming grade performance & good looks, then grab the HP Envy 17.
The Asus ROG G73Jh is big and bulky when its compared to the HP machine, but i think it offers a superior cooling solution and may also OC much better it the cooling system can handle the heat.

Also, i dont mind the design on the Asus at all.

 

Perhaps if you are into gaming and prefer the looks of an HP, give the Sager/Clevo notebooks a look. The Sager NP8760 has the 5870 looks more like an HP than the Asus G73 does. Also, it is less expensive.

 

yes i am also.. in a way he has to be suicidical.. after my experiences with hp , i'm not getting a laptop from them.. G73 all the way.. Sager's quite good too but its more bulky for 17 inch model and the 15 inch one has a fan that runs louder than a turbine.. so IMo , G73 FTW!

 

Basing your decision on one model is silly.

You will rapidly run out of brands to choose from. If I discarded each company from bad experiences:

Acer
MSI
Intel
AMD
ASUS
Gigabyte
DFI
Seagate
Western digital

Are just a few of the brands I could not use.

 

Asus ROG G73JH Review here at Notebookreview.com
Just to remind the OP that only HP Envy 17 & Asus ROG G73JH offers backlit keyboards.
Have not seen the Sager NP8760 with that type of keyboard.

Off topic:
Had a terrible experience with my first Acer Aspire.
It was running a Intel Mobile P4 and a ATI Mobility Radeon X600.
It just fell apart, so i had to use duct tape to hold it together.
But it still boots up to this day, only its crap to use.

Also had overheat issues with a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo with ATI Mobility Radeon X1800.

Still dont like Fujitsu notebooks to this day, but Acer has really improved build quality since last time i owned one.

 

Yeah I owned a 1694WLMI that would flex the motherboard when you picked it up which eventually killed it.

 

They have different chassis. Check out this service manual for the Envy 17:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02160120.pdf

On pp. 18 and 20, you can clearly see the notebook only uses one fan. As for whether the Envy17 is just as hot or cooler than it's 15" variant... I will chime in once my 17 arrives this weekend.

 

I didn't mean to imply that I prefer HP as a company over Asus. I just meant that when it comes to the differences between the Envy 17 and G73 that are apparent to me from specs and pictures, I prefer the HP Envy. It just suits my eye a lot better, and makes a big 17" laptop seem all the much more portable.

 

Not quite, since the desktop cards have different shader counts.

 

Yeah but what's 80 shaders between friends? Makes hardly any difference.

 

Much the same could be said of the clock speed differences in these mobile cards, especially the 12% at stock clock speeds and considering the memory clock speeds are still the same in both.

The interesting question is the voltages the two cards run at, and the clock speeds they can run at depending on the voltage (assuming temperatures are the same).

If the voltage is the only real difference, you could probably increase it in the vBIOS and get the 5850 to 5870 levels of overclocking. However, the 5850s might have lower bin grades and be unable to reach such clock speeds, even with higher voltage.

In any case, the 5850 hasn't really been tested enough to judge its overclocking potential conclusively.

 

Well, the PCB design is different as well to cater to different wattage etc, so I doubt it's as simple as a vBios flash.

 

Do you have images of the PCBs?

 

Hey, I just bought the m15x with the 5850. How hot did it get and what tools did you use to O/C it? I'm kind of an O/C noob so don't spare any details