2GB 5850 vs 2GB 5870

Hi, I'm planning to make a DIY vidock with either of these two cards. Which one would be more worth the price? I've already heard that the regular 1GB 5850 has the most value for it's power than the 1GB 5870.

5850: $383
5870: $479

Thanks!

 

I would get an even cheaper GPU since I believe neither will perform as well as they would on a desktop as you will be limited by the PCIe bandwidth on your laptop. However, check out the ViDock threads in the forum for more insight on which GPU would be optimal.

 

The difference between the two of them looks a bit steep. I'd look well into the benchmarks and see if the price difference is worthy.

 

I would say it depends on how much you want to spend. I added the ATI 5770 @ $145 at NewEgg without the rebate. Breaking it down with the price you gave and the number of shaders:

5770: 800 / $145 = .181 or 18 cents per shader

5850: 1440 / $383 = .266 or 26 cents per shader

5870: 1600 / $479 = .299 or 30 cents per shader

I thought remember reading somewhere that someone mentioned that the ATI HD5770 is the best bang for the buck for the DIY ViDock.



I hope this helps. God Bless

 

Any 2GB card will be a great boost in the limited bandwidth DIY ViDock setup. If wanting to go maximum bang-per-buck, why not a s/h $150-$200 2GB HD4870? It would give you a good baseline to work from and you could easily resell with minimal losses if wanting 2GB HD58xx performance.

With any of these cards the bottleneck will not be GPU processing speed, it will be the VRAM<->system RAM transfers across the x1 1.0 link. 2GB VRAM helps but we have no comparative benchmarks to show by how much.

If planning to use an Intel chipset equipped notebook I hope your system can do at least a x1E link. Better would be x2 1.0. See x1, x1E, x2 benchmark results.

 

Hello nando,

You helped me determine that my laptop was capable of x2 1.0 a while back. I'm in Canada, so finding these cards is a bit harder.

It turns out that there's a 2GB 4890 as well, but I have no idea where to find one. I'm also going to do what you have in your signature; I'm going to buy a laptop with expresscard 2.0 and hopefully usb 3.0 (for using the internal LCD), and make a DIY vidock for that as well.

 

Oh yes.. that's right. The Dell XPS M1330.

You can run Windowed games using the internal LCD. I've devised a way of doing this without an external LCD here. There is a performance drop as Win7 clones the window to be shown on the internal LCD but it's still way faster than running using Intel graphics. Performance testing on a T2050-1.6/GMA950 DV2000 and T6600/4500MHD Inspiron 1440 find the window cloning speed is dependant on the underlying system peformance (CPU/RAM).

Such a setup means I could have a portable DIY ViDock setup: a Gigabyte HD5750 + 80W PSU + DIYViDock bits in tiny enclosure to take with the notebook and play games at a remote location without too much inconvenience.

 

both will be a waste of money

performance hit is too high (50% to 70+%) based on HD 4870 and HD 3850


HD4870-1GB @ 1680x1050



Resident Evil 5

PCI-E x16 2.0
78.5FPS

x1 1.0
30.9FPS



Crysis

PCI-E x16 2.0
32.77FPS

x1 1.0
17.30FPS


Performance: pci-e scaling analysis at x16, x2 and x1 speeds
what more if you put a 5850 or 5870

you better get a new notebook with a good gpu like this one
MSI GX640 with ATI Mobility HD 5850 GDDR5 1GB
or this one
Asus G73JH-A2 with ATI Mobility HD 5870 GDDR5 1GB

 

His M1330 can do a x2 1.0 link which performs much better. A 2GB card has a further sparing affect on pci-e bandwidth. As to value, a s/h 2GB HD4870 from ebay is hard to beat for bang-per-buck. Though agree, good to keep the cost of a GX640/GX740 or G73JH in mind before contemplating this as an overall solution.

 

the problem is the cost and haste

you need a decent supply to power a 2GB 5850 or 2GB 5870 Graphics card
you need an external monitor to make use of the video card
the hassle of modding making changes to laptop to set the graphics cart to work

lets compute the cost
you will shell
$55 or more for the express card pci-e adaptor
DiY Vidock
you will need a decent powersupply
Corsair CMPSU-400CX 400W $49.99
you will need an external monitor
Refurbished Dell ST2210 21.5 1920.1080 5ms HDMI $139
and the card itself
Sapphire Toxic 5850 2GB $379.99
Sapphire Vapor X 5870 2GB $482.99
+ the headaches of installing, modding, and the mess and not delivering full performance

for the price id rather buy a refurb notebook with powerful cpu and gpu like this one
Asus G71GX-RX05 with Core 2 Duo P87002.53GHz(can be overclock to 2.8ghz and beyond) and GTX 260M 1GB For $774.99 Free Shipping

 

Maybe the G71 is a compromise if wanting gaming with a low level of portability?

Consider how the recent gaming systems compare with recent ultraportables. By design they can't offer portability since the chassis requires higher cooling and the gpu's suck a fair bit of power.

12" Lenovo X201: 1.63kgs/9-cell, ~10hrs battery life
12" HP 2540P: 1.9kgs/9-cell, ~9hrs battery life
15" MSI GX640: 2.7kgs/9-cell , 2.5hrs battery life
17" Asus G73JH: 3.9kgs/8-cell, 1.75hrs battery life

DIY ViDock provides gaming cred AND portability. At x1 1.0 speed it's definitely lacking in performance. This will become a more serious solution when expresscard 2.0 is released that provide decent bandwidth.

Also software is being beta tested to make the DIY ViDock a lot easier to install which will be released soon. It's another choice.

 

So what notebooks have the expresscard x2 1.0 link ?? I have the older aluminum MacBook Pro 4.1 with the expresscard slot does mine have a x1 or x2 or how can I tell ?? Thanks for any info. God Bless

 

portability?
you need an external monitor to use the gpu
does bringing an external monitor with you is portability?
you need a power supply to power the video card(6PIN and 8PIN)

is that what you call portability?

 

Portability in general? Yes.

Portability for gaming? No.

 

Hello again,
The 700 dollar laptop with a GTX260M is enticing, but I'm heading to university next year, and I don't think I can carry a 17 inch laptop very well. Also, the 2GB 4870 is more powerful than the GTX260M, so I don't really want to spend 700 dollars on the new laptop when I can spend about $225 for the DIY Vidock. Added to the fact that I can't upgrade an internal GPU, while I can upgrade the graphics card and even the laptop itself for a DIY Vidock.
DIY Vidock looks like a good solution, because I will most likely not be utilizing the GTX260 while in a lecture.

So nando, once I get a new expresscard 2.0 laptop, will a 2GB still be as big of a jump in effectiveness as a regular 1GB card? I still want to be able to get the best performance for the price.
For example, once expresscard 2.0 laptops come out, would a 2GB 5850 still have as big of a jump in performance as a 1GB 5850 in the Vidock's case? If not, then I may just get a 1GB 5850 after the 2GB 4870.

I looked into the internal LCD solution, and it is quite intriguing. Once laptops frequently come with usb 3.0, hopefully I can use the internal LCD with little performance loss. However, I'm using Windows XP; is it compatible with your cloning solution?


EDIT: It is nearly impossible to find a 2GB 4870/4890 in Canada. All the ones on ebay.ca are 4870 X2 2GB. If anyone has a link for these cards shipping to Canada, post it here please!

 

keep in mind that Desktop cards HD 4870, 5850 and 5870 will be hugely bottlenecked by the bandwidth of express card(your looking at 50%-70%+ performance loss)

i wont be surprised if the GTX 260m performs better than those desktop cards

be ready of latency problems and possibly microstutering from HUGE bandwidth deficit of expresscard

more video memory needs a higher bandwidth so imagine if you use a 2GB

just to give you an idea of how massive hd 5850 and 5870 is
5850 and 5870 size comparisson

im assuming you will be leaving your DIY Vidock on your desktop

you better buy a desktop computer for gaming then buy something like asus ul series or acer timeline series that have VERY good battery life for your school

if you dont like 17inch laptop then you may want to look at this one
Newegg.com - Recertified: ASUS G60VX-RBBX05 NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo P7450(2.13GHz) 16" 4GB Memory DDR2 800 320GB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M

size comparison of asus g60vx and asus g71gx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1lDTqbrvgc

 

You are a bit off on the bottlenecking issue. Firstly, I'm getting a 2GB 5850/5870 AFTER I get a 2GB 4870. A 2GB 4870 outperforms a GTX 260M, and the bottlenecking with my x2 1.0 link is only a 20% performance loss, vs a 50% performance loss using a x1 1.0 link. And besides, as expresscard 2.0 comes, I can do a 2.0 x2 link, which eliminates bottlenecking even further after I get a new laptop.

I'm only looking at laptops that are 13.3 inches or under.

JDELUNA, to check if you can do a x2 1.0 link, you have to take out your wifi card from under your laptop, switch it to the slot above/below it, and check using a program like EVEREST to see if the card is read. If it is, then you can do x2 1.0 link. Keep in mind that unless you somehow have 3 1.0 slots or a x1 2.0 slot, you will have to use an external wifi hub to get internet (since both your slots are now taken by the DIY vidock in a x2 1.0 setup).

The most frustrating part now is finding a 2GB 4870 that ships to Canada and is $200 or under.

 

There are restrictions on x2 1.0 with intel chipsets. You need to combine port1+port2 OR port3+port4 OR port5+port6 to do a x2 link. You can't combine intermedate ports. Eg: port1+port4. So then only some notebooks have the right port layout to do x2.

The ebay 2GB HD4870 is still at $145. Maybe the owner will ship to CA? These cards only appear occasionally on ebay.

 

I messaged the seller, and I'm going to check his response now.

EDIT: He says he's able to ship to Canada. Looks like this is the card!