august 4 2010 review by lostcircuits

The ASUS RADEON EAH5850 and ASUS RADEON EAH 5850TOP were teamed them up in CrossfireX. The default frequencies and the port configuration as well as the layout and cooling solutions of the two cards are about as different as one could build them within the same design constraints posed by the components but the reviewers did not really expect to find any major problems.

Conclusion:

The main conclusion of teaming up the two different ASUS cards is that it worked without conditions. Both cards, even though they follow different designs and run at different default frequencies, were in perfect harmony when it came down to CrossfireX.

The two RADEON 5850 managed to outperform the 5870 tandem in several benchmarks.

Looking at the raw performance of the CrossfireX combo, there is hardly any benchmark where a single card would have an edge over the CrossfireX configuration. At the same time, we have seen RADEON 5850 offerings for as low as US$ 250.- by now, which comes down to a pair of them matching the price of a single GeForce GTX480 and still delivering higher frame rates across the bench. The same goes for a RADEON 5870 or even a 5890.

Test Setup:

• mainboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair IV Formula
• RAM: OCZ3ALVE16004GK
• Processor: AMD Athlon II X4 965 BE
• Air Cooler: OCZ Vendetta 2
• Hard Drive: HDD: WD 1500ADFD (Raptor)
• SSD: Intel 80GB SSDSA2MH080G15E
• DVD writer: HP dvd1070i-H01 6 Multiformat
• Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Crossfire Edition
• Displays: Acer H233H and Acer B233HU

Compared to:

• ASUS ENGTX480, ASUS Republic of Gamers Matrix 5870 Platinum, ASUS RADEON EAH5770 CuCore, ASUS RADEON EAH5750 Formula
• BFG GeForce GTX280
• Diamond MM RADEON 4870 X2
• MSI RADEON 4870
• PowerColor RADEON HD 5870 PCS+, PowerColor RADEON HD 4890

Benchmarks:

3DMark Vantage, Tropics DX10.1 benchmark, Sanctuary DX 10 Benchmark, Heaven DX11 benchmark, Aliens vs. Predator, Crysis, Devil May Cry4, Dirt2, FarCry 2, F.E.A.R.2, GRID Ebay Motors, Resident Evil, Shattered Horizon, World In Conflict.