Published in Reviews

XFX Evergreen series locked and loaded in our lab

by on13 October 2009

Index










Thermals, Noise

The XFX Radeon HD 5850 is almost inaudible when idle, and while it occasionally hit 82 degrees Celsius in more intensive scenarios and the cooler ran a little louder, it's still not enough to be considered noisy. Only the FurMark tests made the card hit 85 degrees Celsius, and it's only then that the fan became a bit loud, but that happened for brief moments.

AMD made sure that Evergreen cards get appropriate, quiet and stable cooling, which is a big step from the previous generation. The XFX HD 5850 ran at about 38 degrees Celsius in idle mode, and the entire rig without the monitor consumed from 80 to 88W. 

With XFX HD 5770 and XFX HD 5750  in in our rig, idle consumption ducked by a couple of W, and our system consumed up to 85W. During HD 5770 testing, we measured maximum test-rig consumption of 201W. The same scenario with the HD5850 resulted in consumption of 276W whereas the HD 5750 resulted in our system consuming up to 186W.

During operation, the XFX HD 5770's temperatures climbed up to 76 degrees Celsius, whereas the HD 5750 temperatures hit up to 65 degrees Celsius.



Conclusion

ATI had a good launch of Radeon 5770 cards and the new cards with the 128-bit memory interface matched with 1200MHz memory and 850MHz core clocks proved to be a good combination. Its 40nm little brother - the Radeon 5750 is a bit slower. 

All the today's cards come with dual slot cooling that runs pretty silent except on the HD 5850, which can occasionally be heard. All the Evergreen series cards come with DX 11 support and thus are great future-proof investments.Windows 7 will be out soon, and if you're planing to milk it for all it's worth, then these cards are currently the best, and only option(s).

Our today's test samples once again prove that XFX has what it takes to deliver quality products, and with the 5-Star support, you'll be set for a long, long time. 


XFX HD 5770

The XFX HD 5770 is a mainstream card, but despite sharing the market segment with the HD 4870, it has a lot more to offer. Of course, this is a DX11 card as well, and while it consumes less than the previous generation at same clocks, that's not all as it brings plenty of outs as well as ATI Eyefinity support. You can find this card at Newegg, where it's priced lower than in the EU (130 euro). On the other hand, no matter where you purchase it, this card is worth every penny.

XFX HD 5750

XFX HD 5750 is currently the slowest offering to come from AMD's Evergreen generation, but it still packs enough punch for gaming at standard resolutions. It outperforms the HD 4850 and HD 4770 cards, but the price isn't quite attractive. Despite the fact that it's priced at saucy 115 euro, it seems as if all the cards are sold out already. The reason probably hides behind the fact that people want cheap DirectX 11 cards, even if they're not so cheap for what you get.

XFX HD 5850

The XFX HD 5850 is clearly on of the best cards we've had on our tests and the bang-per-buck ratio is excellent. 220 euro, which is the pricetag on XFX's HD 5850, buys you an excellent gaming card with support for AMD's latest technologies and of course - DirectX 11. If that's not enough, throw in a free game Dirt 2, and it turns into a no brainer. The card runs at reference clocks, but it's more than enough for playing any game you'd like. It's about 15% slower than the currently fastest single-GPU card, the HD 5870, but bear in mind that it's about 40% cheaper as well, which is a great deal. The golden combination of excellent performance, quiet operation and attractive pricing go a long way towards earning this card our award. Add to that the fact that this is a DX11 card which presents a great investment in the future and that it features AMD's Eyefinity, and this is a no brainer - we dub the XFX HD 5850 a Fudzilla Recommended graphics card.


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Last modified on 14 October 2009
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