5850 About To Buy

Nope, the price drop for the 5850 is quite a bit, and in terms of the performance loss, totally worth it.

Any other opinions? Thanks Lord.

*I went with the Sapphire version, for a total of $342.
 
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I would not buy it right now knowing that it is going to be lower in the future, and I know that I don't really need it rightnow.
 
I'm a little late to this party, but I'd say yeah. Wait for CES to be over. :)
 
1) There's no guarantee the Nvidia cards will be much faster, if at all. Remember the geforceFX debacle? It played out just like today, with Nvidia and their shills saying "wait for it, wait for it, wait for it", then releasing an underwhelming product.
2) There's no guarantee anyone will be able to afford it. Nvidia has released every flagship card since the 8800 at $500+.
3) It won't come out until April/May at the soonest. If a person didn't buy a video card because something faster would come out in four months, they'd never buy a video card again.

With all that said, enjoy your purchase. And if you regret it later, ebay for a small loss and upgrade to something faster.
 
Yea I actually just received it at my door today. Everything looks good. Will be doing an unboxing later today for my personal joy. And loading it up.

Normally, at least the past couple years when I upgrade a driver, I just install the new driver over the old one. I believe Nvidia made it that way. Either way, never had issues. I assume that this is a different driver, different company. I should uninstall Nvidia drivers, reboot, install card, and let windows install the drivers, then if I want download the latest?

*update

Here is the unboxing, crappy pictures though, stupid camera.

http://picasaweb.google.com/b.wadey/Radeon5850Unboxing?feat=directlink
 
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So what are you upgrading from?

Must be exciting thinking about all the games that whipped your computer before and you can go back and destroy now!
 
8800GT to this card. Quite the upgrade. Though I have to say, the 8800 was still holding on strong.
 
So I loaded the card up, and of course I run into a problem.

Kept on crashing. The first time it crashed, was when I had a game loaded, and I plugged in the 360 controller. So I removed it, crashed again. So I removed 2 other USB devices. So far it seems fine. Though I have not tried a game since.

So I am thinking its my power supply, which is a 700W PSU. So I went to that Power Supply Calculator site, and entered my system, and they say the minimum is 408W, which means I should at least have a 500W system. Which of course I have better then that.

Any ideas?

*edit did it again, I was not even doing anything intensive. All extra USB items are unplugged as well. I am thinking it might be a wiring issue, one I had awhile back that just went away lol
 
Does it crash as in your app crashes, or the computer freezes/BSOD? I assume you're running Vista or W7 x64.
 
Windows 7.

And it's like power goes off. No BSOD or anything, black dead screen, dead computer. Starts right back up when I hit power.

Does not make sense that its a power issue, nor makes sense that its a wiring issue. I plugged the pc into another outlet, just to see, which made no difference.

Could it be the card itself? Anyway to know...

It was running for around 10-15 minutes. From the last time it crashed, I fiddled with some of the wires. And it's been 35 minutes or so. I had an issue awhile back where my computer would not start up. We came to conclusion that its probably a wire conducting with metal on the back of the motherboard. My system is very messy inside. So this could be related. If the system continues to run, then it might be that. I am hopfully heading to my local PC shop to get it all nicely cleaned, professionally wired, and checked. And hopefully that is it. Yet I still think it's going to crash. We will see.
 
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Well seems like it was the wiring issue. Cause it ran all night and all today so far. So when I get a change I will get that fixed up.

Besides this, this card is amazing. I have been playing Batman Arkham Asylum and DiRT 2 with amazing FPS. Looks beautiful! It's also makes little noise, amazing.


*edit I did notice that NVIDIA Drivers is still in the control panel, and i can't remove it. I actually removed the entry with CCleaner, but it came back...hmm
 
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the 8800gt is still an amazing card indeed

with the cost of hardware here in argentina, im not even remotely cosidering upgrading until i see a new card that has a similar price/perf ratio
 
I agree, though I was playing most things at 1680x1050.

I bet my 8800GT can not do 1920x1200 and full settings.
 
well.. the 8800gt wasnt really made for playin high end games at such high res.. so, makes sense

if you're buying a big new screen, then you'd need a new card prolly
 
The NVIDIA 8800 (G92) cards were superb and still are in ways. The newer cards thoroughly thrash the 8800, however. The ATI 4870 was a superb card and so is the 5870. I have no doubt the 5850 will also hold its own to a lesser degree. For the diehard fans of the NVIDIA 8800, play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl with everything maxxed out at 1680x1050. Until I buy a new monitor I can't do 1920x1080. My Samsung 22" monitor is dying on me. :mad: Anyway, on my system with either a C2Q Q6600 or C2Q 9550 that would have caused a seizure in an epilectic person sensitive to flashing lights. It was simply nauseating for me and triggered a massive headache. With the 4870 and 5870 the game is beautiful by comparison. All three cards are great cards and for an HTPC the 8800 worked just fine for me. For gaming/HTPC system I'd take higher end 4000 series card or 5000. I really don't want to imagine how much less I would have enjoyed Batman, DiRT2, and other games if I was still using my NVIDIA 8800. NVIDIA has a lot of work to gain back my interest.

It's good to hear that you resolved the problem although wiring issues can be a major pain and hard to track down.
 
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Quick question. (thanks rotjong as well)

How much do you think a nice wiring job should cost. I am going to go to my local place as I said (PCCyber) and get them to clean it out, make sure everything is plugged in like it should be, and make the wires look nice and out of the way and all that good stuff.

How much you think that is worth? I was there awhile ago and the one guy said I could do it for $20 (which was just for the wires). I doubt they would give me that price if I went again..
 

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