Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 XTREME 1 GB DDR5 HDMI/DVI-I/DP PCI-Express Graphics Card 100282XTREME

Sapphire Technology is a Hong Kong based company which produces graphics cards for personal computers and is the largest supplier of AMD based video cards in the world


Although the 5000 series ATI cards have been released for quite some time, Sapphire have just released a new version of the HD 5850 called the Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB Xtreme
Since the 6000 series were released most brands have dropped the 5000 series from production but Sapphire have re-released this with even better pricing
It is targeted at the budget gamer who wants to play high quality games without spending a lot of money
It was available at Overclockers for around £130 but I bought this card from them when it was on offer recently at £95

The Sapphire 5850 shares the same Cypress 40nm chip that we see on the 5870, the only difference is that the 5850 is a bit slower and less power hungry
Compared to the 5870 the core clock has been reduced from 850Mhz to 725Mhz and the memory clock down from 1200Mhz to 1000Mhz
The load power of the 5850 has also dropped from 188W to 151W



Specification

GPU
725 MHz Core Clock
40 nm Chip
1440 x Stream Processors

Memory
1024 MB Size
256 -bit GDDR5
4000 MHz Effective

Output
1 x Dual-Link DVI
1 x HDMI
1 x DisplayPort

Accessories
Driver CD
DVI to VGA Adapter
Two Molex to 6 PIN Power Cable
User manual

Features
DirectX 11 support
ATI Eyefinity Multi display
ATI CrossfireX
HDMI and Audio support
ATI Stream technology


Unboxing

The box itself is smaller than what is usually supplied as the card is shorter than the 5870 by about 6cm
The front shows the main features of the card




The rear of the box goes into more detail about the card along with a list of contents and gallery showing some of the 1600 awards since 2002




Inside the box the accessories include a Driver CD, User manual, Two Molex to 6 PIN Power Cable, a DVI-VGA adapter and details about tha Sapphire Select Club





The card has an 80mm black fan which runs very quietly and sits on three copper heatpipes and aluminium fins which keeps the card very cool indeed
The plastic cover is a little bit flimsy as it isn't attached around the edges but this will not be a problem once inside your case





A view of the back of the card showing the PCB and the crossfire connector





The 5850 has two 6-pin PCI-Express connectors placed at the end of the card





From the left we have a DisplayPort connector, a HDMI Connector and one DVI port





Testing and Overclocking

The Benchmarks I have used are 3DMark06 to test the DirectX9 performance and 3DMark11 designed to test DirectX 11 capabilities

Test System

Mainboard
Gigabyte GA-P67A UD7-B3

Processor
Intel Core i7 2600K @ 5000 MHz

Graphics Card
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB Xtreme


Memory
2x 2048 MB G.Skill Ripjaws

Power Supply Unit
Akasa 1200 Watt


3DMark06 and 3DMark11 at stock speeds







The card was then pushed to 820Mhz Core and 1100Mhz memory using the Sapphire TriXX Tweak Utility and the fan set at 50%
The card was still running very quiet




As you can see 3DMark06 gained 1900 points and 3DMark11 gained just over 400 points







The TriXX Utility also allows the voltage of the core to be adjusted from 1.088v to 1.300v, with MSI Afterburner the voltage is locked at 1.088v


This time I adjusted the the clocks to 950Mhz Core and 1200Mhz on the Memory and set the voltage of the card at 1.274v and the fan at 100%
At these settings the gains were even higher, almost 2400 points in 3DMark06 and 560 in 3DMark11










The temperature of the card was also excellent, peaking at a maximum was 54°C




Conclusion

I was very impressed by many points of the Sapphire 5850 Xtreme

Its price is a lot cheaper than the 5870 but when overclocked it certainly rivalled its bigger brother
The fan was very quiet and kept the temperatures low even at the higher voltage settings
The length of the card means that it will fit in most PC cases
The TriXX utility allowed voltage adjustment of the core clocks
Many features such as ATI CrossfireX, DirectX11 and Eyefinity
Low power usage at only 27w idle/151w load
Aggressively priced compared to other manufacturers of the same model

There is very little to dislike about the Sapphire 5850 Xtreme, it offers the best power and performance in its price bracket
and is very much recommended for the budget gamer who wants to play the latest games without breaking the bank