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ASUS EAH5850/G/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 Video Card Review

Jason Landals
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It’s that time again! A new video card chipset has been released, and like before we get to take a look at what this latest chip holds in store for our gaming and graphics pleasure. This time the chipset is being released from the labs at AMD.


Dubbed the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series, this newest piece of silicon comes in two flavours: The high end is represented by the 5870, and the mid-range the 5850, which is what we’re looking at today. This latest chip is supposed to support the new DirectX 11 features that will hopefully be fully exploited in Windows 7.

The folks over at ASUS thought it would be nice to throw a 5850 based card our way, but this isn’t any normal 5850. It supposedly has some tweaks that give it extra performance.

Features and Specifications

The ASUS EAH5850/G/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 video card may have a ridiculously large amount of letters and numbers in its product name, but it’s also supposed to have a up to a 38% performance boost thanks to the exclusive Voltage Tweak technology employed by ASUS. At first glance I’m sceptical as to how this works, as the specifications on the card are the same as the ATI reference specifications.

Full specifications for the ASUS card are of course available from the product home page, but here’s a quick run down of what you get.

  • Exclusive Voltage Tweak Technology to increase up to 38% performance!
  • Hottest DX11 Game Bundled: Dirt2
  • Gigantic 1GB DDR5 for Incredible Gaming performance
  • HDMI & DisplayPort output support
  • Eyefinity Technology for 3-monitor output!
  • HDCP compliant

Save for the Voltage Tweak technology, that overview could be echoed by any Radeon HD 5850 based card. The ASUS card is even priced in the same range at $299 USD from most retailers. So what exactly is it that sets this card apart? Or is it too early in the life of the 5850 to be able to set cards apart? We’ll have to find out in the following pages.

How About Fancy Packaging For Starters?

Actually ASUS did do one thing different with their 5850 that’s immediately apparent, and not something I normally talk about. They put that card in some fancy packaging.

Rather than just putting video card in some protective foam, setting aside a box for extras, and tossing the paper work on top, they took an almost Apple-like approach to the packaging and presentation. The paperwork comes it’s own folder, and the accessories have their own covered box. The video card still comes in the same white foam we all know an love, but getting there is rather interesting. This opening the box user experience is very similar to what ASUS did with the Premium Essence STX Audio Card.

Hopefully the numbers posted by this card are just as inspired.

What’s Inside The Box?

I’m know to lament the lack inclusion of some sort of game with the video cards I’ve reviewed. That being said I do understand the reason behind it; margins are slim and the companies need to maximize their returns as much as possible to be able to keep putting out products.

Needless to say I was rather happy to see a game included with the ASUS Radeon HD 5850 video card. It’s actually a bundle being released with many ATI Radeon HD 5850 cards, and the best part is it’s a very recent title. Actually it’s Colin McRae’s DiRT 2, which is so new it hasn’t been released yet. Activating the game does require creating or having a Steam account and installation of the Steam client. If you have a problem with that…well I simply can’t help you.

As for the rest of the accessories, they are pretty standard. There’s the usual drivers discs, a Molex-to-PCIe power adapter, a Crossfire bridge, and DVI-to-VGA convertor.





And The Card?

The front of the Asus HD 5890 card sports a slightly different port configuration from what we are used to seeing with previous generations of video cards. Here we have two DVI ports stacked on top of each other, with an HDMI and DisplayPort connector next to each other at the card level. Now you may think “hey that’s four video outputs,” and you would be right if you weren’t wrong.

Most HD 58xx based cards only support three monitors, with one of the DVI ports and the HDMI port sharing a channel. You can still use a DisplayPort dongle to convert to VGA or single-link DVI should you need to connect more then two DVI displays, but the buck stops at three.

The rear of the card looks a little more familiar. ATI still seems to only need two 6-pin PCIe connectors with their offerings that aren’t a dual GPU/card. Though the shroud covers them, the power requirements of this video card are kept stable with the use of solid state capacitors. This has pretty well become the de facto standard on video cards and motherboards, and hopefully should make the popping capacitor a thing of the past.

Speaking of the cooling shroud, ATI has started encasing their video cards in these plastic cases. This is done in an effort to improve airflow from the back to the front of the video card, keeping it cool in an efficient manner. Now unlike the HD 5870 based cards, the 5850 isn’t completely encased in plastic. The rear is exposed, allowing access to remove the OEM cooling system and add aftermarket cooling should such a thing come available.

As a finishing touch, ASUS put little blue covers on every connector. This is something normally seen on the GIGABYTE cards we review, but it would appear it’s turned into something of a trend.

The Test Rig

The ASUS EAH5850/G/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 video card appears to be quite the powerful video card, so it should be tested on quite a powerful test rig. Fortunately my standard test rig fits the bill. Here’s the specifications.

As for actual benchmarks we ran through a nice combination of synthetic and real world tests. We pretty well focused on gaming, trying to pick the most punishing titles in a particular genre. The 5850 was compared to the previous 4890 cards we’ve reviewed, as well as those cards in Crossfire. May the fastest card win.

Overclocker’s Dream?

Before going down the long and dark road of benchmarks, I figured we should take a look at the overclockability of the ASUS Radeon HD 5850. ASUS does tout the Voltage Tweak technology of this card. Since there doesn’t seem to be any boost in the base specifications of this card, it would stand to reason that perhaps the voltage tweaks allow for a higher overclock.

We did manage to eke out a 125MHz overclock from the GPU, and a 95MHz overclock from the RAM. This was without trying. The card does have some room to grow, but it does appear to decently overclockable. You can further unleash that capability using ASUS’ own SmartDoctor utility which includes further voltage tweaks to stimulate performance. However, for the purposes of this review, we will stick to the reference AMD/ATI drivers to maintain consistency.





The Synthetic Benchmarks

We start off our round of benchmarks with the synthetic tests, and we start off the synthetic tests with a quick dip in the lake known as 3DMark06 Pro. This benchmark tests DirectX 9 performance, and is still going strong under Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Why still test DirectX 9? Well genius, there’s still plenty of DX9 based titles out there. Ever heard of Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2? They’re both DX9 titles. Can we move on now?

3DMark06 Professional

In my last video card review I had lamented the lack of performance increase when going from a single HD 4890 to two HD 4890 cards in CrossFire. That still holds true, but the ASUS HD 5850 provides a nice median between the two extremes. This card is 7% faster than a single HD 4890 while being only 7% slower than two 4890 cards, placing it right smack in the middle.

3DMark Vantage

Moving over to 3DMark Vantage, we get to see the CrossFire rig pull ahead a little in the performance numbers. As we move higher up in resolution and detail settings, the old CrossFire rig gets a further leg up on the single HD 5850. However the HD 5850 still maintains a solid lead over the old HD 4890.

The advantage starts to become clear when you start comparing prices between the two card HD 4890 configuration and the single HD 5850. This is a definite plus to the HD 5850. Owners of existing HD 4890s may still want to take advantage of a second card instead of upgrading because the rapidly dropping prices make them a better upgrade option.

The DirectX 9 Files

Since we used these benchmarks in our last video card review it only seemed suiting to continue with their use, if only as a point of comparison for the ASUS Radeon HD 5850. We lead off our round of benchmarks with Call of Duty 4. Though two sequels to this game have now been released, this title is still the most played amongst PC gamers. We also check out my personal favourite, Team Fortress 2.

Call of Duty 4

The ASUS Radeon HD 5850 seems to display a particular performance glitch we experienced with the DIAMOND card in CrossFire; there really isn’t much of a performance difference between the games. Tests were performed with Very High settings, and Vsync was double-checked to make sure it was disabled. This anomaly makes a quick judgment rather difficult.

Sure the HD 5850 performs well in CoD4, but so do all the other cards we’ve tested.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 produced even weirder results, with our timedemo scoring the Radeon HD 5850 lower then the 4890, and much lower then the CrossFire configuration. I re-ran the timedemo I recorded from a match with the crazy kids from Penny Arcade Forums, and found the same results kept popping up. I even verified the settings used, and there was no change from when we last tested a video card.





World in Conflict

With the switch over to DX10 based tests, I had hope for some verification of the results we gleaned from out sythetic tests. Sadly the ASUS Radeon HD 5850 card didn’t deliver. It still managed to post numbers similar to what we got from the HD 4890 cards we tested a while back, but it was able to rest in its happy hunting ground between one HD 4890 and two CrossFire HD 4890 cards.

Crysis

I was hoping that of all the titles we used for benchmarking, surely the hardy and downright unforgiving engine found in Crysis would provide some separation in the numbers. I was quite nearly vindicated; the numbers were still a little mixed but they were different.

In our Crysis benchmarks, the ASUS Radeon HD 5850 managed to out-perform both the single and CrossFire HD 4890 setup at the lower of our two test resolutions. The higher resolution produced numbers similar to what we saw with the synthetic benchmarks. So I guess to really see the benefit of this card you need to push it hard. Really hard.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

I really don’t know what to think about the ASUS EAH5850/G/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 video card. I do read other reviews, and as far as I can tell, it should be playing second fiddle only to its slightly more powerful sibling, the HD 5870. However I can’t ignore our performance numbers, which paint a different picture.

The Radeon HD 5850 seems to be all over the map on our lower end game benchmarks. This may be due to those tests now being CPU limited, but it would appear the HD 5850 really distinguishes itself when under stress. ASUS does go out of their way to provide a solid package and a stable card. It even overclocks with a minor amount of nudging and those that dare can take the voltages up with capabilities programmed right into its specially tweaked BIOS using their SmartDoctor utility.

In the end, the ASUS HD 5850 presents a conundrum. Our tests show it to have middling performance, but the community at large says “hey this card is great”. I still need to side with the numbers I’ve posted, and hope I can figure out what exactly is going on with this card. The package, build quality, and overall performance does warrant a high rating, but no award can be given due to the question mark above the head of this card in terms of performance. Hopefully we’ll be able to have a second look when drivers are a little more mature. That’s the only thing that one can point their fingers at for this moment.

Pros

  • Excellent bundle
  • Solidly built card
  • Second only to 5870 is terms of raw specs
  • Overclocking and Voltage Tweak abilities out of the box
  • Price

Cons

  • Wildly fluctuating performance numbers (Driver Related?)

Overall Rating: 8.0/10.0

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