sound test is more of an wine test as i have had fans that are stated as quite but at low speeds thay wine, 9800gx2 i would clase as loud but you need to be doing folding to get that fan up

only really had this issue with amd fans (the fan makes an notisable catch noise) and most thermaltake fans wine

Originally Posted by Tim S
As we've said many times over - it's impossible to accurately record noise levels without sending every product off to a proper sound chamber.

Have you thought of just making a small sound booth that would fit the test PC and your test equipment? While it would not be as good as shipping kit to a proper testing place, it would allow you to give a more rounded answer to how loud components are, as it would cut out a lot of background noise. These can be made relativly cheaply and I'm sure it could be made to dismantle for easy storage.

It would certainly help knowing how load kit is before making a buying desision, If I had know how load my 9800GX2 was before buying, I'd have not got it. However I am tempted to replace it with a new 5850.........

Originally Posted by tad2008
I guess measuring noise levels is something the manufacturers should realistically be doing.

Not really, since manufacturers rarely (ever?) bother to give details about their testing methods, which means we end up with useful and informative nonsense like "13.3 dB noise levels!!" or "386% quieter!!" seen on some products.

5850 gets owned hard by last gen cards fact

if you want to save electric bill your in the wrong market. 260 is about 130 pounds for similar performance.

Niether card will win price performance crown. £220 is overkill

Will the 5870x2 cost £600? Would not surprise me. If one costs £300

To purchase either card you gotta game at full HD and above resolutions. At which point this card doesn't have the grunt to compete. If your gaming at 1600x1200 your wasting money that could go on sumit else

at the point for me it's 5870 or not bother.(£300) vs the 4890 I have already

Originally Posted by rollo
5850 gets owned hard by last gen cards fact

if you want to save electric bill your in the wrong market. 260 is about 130 pounds for similar performance.

Niether card will win price performance crown. £220 is overkill

Will the 5870x2 cost £600? Would not surprise me. If one costs £300

To purchase either card you gotta game at full HD and above resolutions. At which point this card doesn't have the grunt to compete. If your gaming at 1600x1200 your wasting money that could go on sumit else

at the point for me it's 5870 or not bother.(£300) vs the 4890 I have already

Actually, even if you had the HD4870 or the HD4890, it brings about quite a bit of performance to the table, especially since it can compete with both the GTX285 and GTX295.

Of course the 260 is much cheaper but you're missing out on about 40%-50% performance, plus the HD5850 is much less power hungry. And you're making too early of an assumption as it hasn't even been 3 months yet, once Nvidia delivers their blow, the prices are undoubtedly going to fall.

I was going to rant but at least both the value 5770 and midrange 5850 have double-height cooling as standard, so that's the biggest bugbear of the previous generations put to bed. By the time I get on with my AM3 build there will probably be a 5890 shaking up the price of these cards as well, not to mention the response from nVidia.

As posted by others forget buying them at launch when £200 would get me any AM3 CPU I wanted, and I would only be buying my second ever PCI-E graphics card which is the other reason i'd wait.

been thinking,since ATI are pushing multi-monitor gaming, what about including some multi-monitor testing? Games like flight simulator, grid, arma, L4D etc would be interesting as while theyre tough to run, they're the games I would make a multi monior setup for.

We tested the power consumption with a Watts Up? Pro power meter, using the device to record the total system power consumption at the wall socket, while we ran three sets of four runs of Crysis in DX10 at 1,920 x 1,200.

You came into the Power Consumption section stating this, yet on the graph it says you used 3DMark06. Could you please clarify which method you used?

Just to beat the noise issue to death: If the stock HD5850 is as quiet or quieter than my 3 year old Gainward Bliss 7950GT I'm sold. It's actually mostly idle noise that concerns me, as long as the noise level at load isn't TOO bad (which I gather it isn't). When I'm gaming I'm wearing a head set anyway.