Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5850 Toxic Edition: Our First Fully-Custom 5850
by Ryan Smith on February 18, 2010 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
A Quick Note on AMD & Factory Clocks
While we were talking to Sapphire about the Toxic 5850, we asked them whether we would be seeing a Toxic 5870 to complement the 5850. We got a surprising answer and an even more surprising reason behind it that we’d like to share with you.
Sapphire will not be producing a 5870 Toxic, and the reason for that is that AMD won’t let them (or anyone else) offer a factory-overclocked card that runs significantly faster than their existing Vapor-X card (875MHz). This apparently isn’t a huge secret, but this is the first time we’ve heard this.
When we asked AMD about this, they told us that this all boils down to what AMD believes is safe operation for their chips. AMD allows vendors to factory overclock their chips to whatever point AMD feels is as high as they can safely go, and no higher. If any significant number of them could go higher, then AMD would have released them as a higher-end bin.
This put’s AMD’s limits at around 875MHz for the 5870, and 765MHz for the 5850. Note that AMD’s Overdrive limits are still higher than this, particularly on the 5870 where Overdrive goes to 900MHz. In practice we were able to get our 5850 Toxic to 895MHz without any kind of voltage adjustment, so even with some breathing room we believe that Cypress chips assigned 5850 status for defective unit reasons (that is, it’s not a 5870 because it has a defective SIMD) are plenty capable of going higher. Particularly with Sapphire’s Vapor-X cooler, the heat isn’t an issue.
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Ryan Smith - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
For temperature testing, we use a fully assembled Thermaltake Spedo. So yes, it's a well ventilated case.Being an open-ended cooler, a well-ventilated case is something that's of greater importance than on a reference card. But at the same time, you need a well-ventilated case anyhow just to avoid having negative air pressure in the case, because a reference 5800 card is going to be blowing out quite a bit of air.
Mr Alpha - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
Are we going to get to see new idle power numbers with Catalyst 10.2 at some point?What about the availability of the 5970? In this part of the world I haven't seen a single one yet, and prices have been creeping up and are getting to the €700 mark. Is it turning into vaporware?
Ryan Smith - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
ULPS only impacts the idle power performance of CF setups. It doesn't impact single cards.Calin - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
As it appears in the pictures, it's wrong (Celsius is the correct text, not Celcius as written)Patrick Wolf - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
Well, I'm sold. Where do I sign?NO! Must...wait...for Fermi. Ugh.
phaxmohdem - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
Sign now! By the time Fermi actually gets released, it WILL be in super limited quantities, and I highly doubt we'll see any lower end derivatives than the 470/480 models from the original Fermi series. It is already 6 months or so late, so it is encroaching on Fermi 2's timeline.My way of thinking, HD5K series now, Fermi 2, when nVidia gets their act together and works out the bugs. It's not like we'll see any useful apps that can harness the purported GPGPU power of Fermi before the HD6K/Fusion series and Fermi2 lines are out anyway.
spidey81 - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
I'll have to agree with him on waiting for Fermi. Not that I want a Fermi based card but that I imagine we will see a $20 to $50 price cut off the top and probably $10 to $20 MIRs on the 5850's and 5870's. At the MSRP I would buy a 5870, but not at the market inflated prices that they are at currently.whatthehey - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
Okay, a few things I have to get off my chest:Page 2: "If any significant number of them could go higher, then AMD would have released them as a higher-end bin."
I call bunk! What's far more likely is that AMD doesn't want any overclocked GPUs coming out that will end up being as fast as the inevitable 5890 or whatever the speed bumped version is called.
Second, why are there no power and noise results for the 5870? These really need to be included.
Finally, a grammar rant. You get these enough I'm sure, so feel free to ignore me. Anyway, "in to" versus "into". I don't think you're getting it quite right a lot of the time. I've noticed Ryan never uses "into". There are places to use "in to" (i.e. "I turned in to the driveway." because "turned in" is a phrasal verb), but there are also times where you need to use "into".
Taking something into consideration is a tough call; I prefer "into" and you use "in to", and I'm not sure which is correct. However, I'd say you definitely throw a wrench INTO gears/recommendations, not throw a wrench IN TO recommendations. Into is typically directional in use. But I could be wrong.
At any rate, you should probably read this:
http://grammartips.homestead.com/into.html">http://grammartips.homestead.com/into.html
Here's one source that agrees with "take in to consideration" as correct:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/take+in+to+...">http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/take+in+to+...
But they also say "take into consideration" is correct (and in both cases they list "take into consideration" lower on the page):
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/take+into+c...">http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/take+into+c...
I still don't like "take in to", but maybe it's because I subscribe to this sort of writing philosophy: Use "into" unless it doesn't make sense that way, like turning a paper into your teacher.
http://en.allexperts.com/q/General-Writing-Grammar...">http://en.allexperts.com/q/General-Writing-Grammar...
jajig - Sunday, February 21, 2010 - link
Thanks for the grammar tip.7Enigma - Friday, February 19, 2010 - link
Agreed. Ryan, call it like it is. We know with no competetion they do not want to be eroding the price premium of the 5870. You can see with your OC you already almost have parity between the 2 in some games. It's all about money, and with no competition it's their right, no matter how much it stinks.