There are a lot of things that we want in life. It's human nature to want something, although of course some of us may take this a step further and replace want with “need”. These “things” could be anything. A glamorous holiday in a place that's always warm and is always sunny when you want it to be. That new BMW coupe that you saw on the streets the other day maybe... Or a really big house, that can cater for all your nearest and dearest. All of this is probably a tad irrelevant for a tech based website... Perhaps we don't care for extravagant holidays. A new sports car? Not at all, that's what Racedriver GRID is for. That big house...all our friends are accessible via Skype! I'm going to stop trying to get myself killed by means of stereotyping and turn one's attention to the release of the Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards codenamed “Cypress”. There are some things in life which can't be had because they're a little out of one's reach at a given point in time. However, in this case (thanks to ATi and TSMC) would seem that whether you have the money or not, you can't have any high end Direct X 11 goodness in your life because there is a pitiful quantity in distribution relative to the current demand for them. To make things worse, it seems ATi may take it upon themselves to raise the value of these products. As these graphics cards trickle through the supply chain and relevant Add in Board Partners, Wholesalers and Retailers profiteer on these highly demanded graphics cards, this will in turn affect pricing greatly. As shown below, the trend of Radeon HD 5850 pricing over the last two months hasn't been particularly promising.

 

It's not too great on nVidia's side either as they appear to have cut production of their GT200 based graphics cards (GTX 260, 275, 285 and 295) and thus the price gauging continues. We shall not let this affect our view on the products themselves but it should be mentioned that these graphics cards are as good as gold dust right now. We were however very grateful that Asus were able to supply us with today's review item, the Asus Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card.

 

Asus shouldn't need any introduction, offering product solutions to all ends of the market from systems components for the retail and OEM as well as their own laptops/netbooks and desktops. The brand has been in the graphics card business for a very long time and have brought a number of memorable products to market including the Asus GTX 295 MARS graphics card. With that in mind, we have very high expectations from the product that we're about to review.

 

 

 

The Asus Radeon HD 5850 has proven itself to be a stunning graphics card, offering performance that is very close to the range topping HD 5870 but with a more pleasant price tag. It should be noted that it sports many of the HD 5870's perks such as ATi Eyefinity Technology, sub 30W power consumption during idle operation and relatively low noise. When you finally factor in that the graphics card was capable of overclocking to the same speeds as the Radeon  HD 5870 and is over an inch shorter allowing for compatability in smaller cases, it seems like a great purchase. 

 

Asus haven't done all that much to separate their product from the rest from a "hard product" point of view, but then again neither has anyone else. Like a number of other brands, Asus have thrown in a coupon of the upcoming DirectX 11 compliant race driving game, DiRT 2 and has a fairly standard accessory list. The only real Asus exclusive extras was the SmartDoctor Overclocking tool, which in all fairness allowed us to overclock past the realms of ATi Overdrive but sadly we were unable to adjust the graphics card's operational voltage. Asus as a brand does stand out from an aftersales support point of view by offering 3 years of warranty on their graphics cards, which is higher than the likes of HIS, Gigabyte, XFX, Sapphire and VTX that offer either 1 or 2 years instead. As it is not uncommon for graphics cards to fail, this could be considered to be a strong plus point for opting for the Asus Radeon HD 5850 over other brands.

 

So the overall verdict? If you're in the market for a graphics card around the £200 mark, then take a long hard look at the Asus Radeon HD 5850...but good look trying to find one. Given the stock shortage of these graphics cards, you will have to join a preorder queue in order to buy one. Patience is the key but you should be prepared to wait for a certain amount of time that could be measurable in weeks to get your hands on one and this is regardless of the brand. In all honesty, today's circumstances are such that if you really want a Radeon HD 5800 series graphics card, then you should purchase whatever is available at the time for the cheapest price. With a lack of supply and an influx of demand will inevitably see further price increases. As the prices of these graphics cards creep higher and higher, it gets to a point where the product is no longer worth it. Some graphics card brand prices will rise more or less than each other and because of this, it's tough to recommend any particular brand of Radeon HD 5850 over another, especially when you strip away accessories, duration of warranty and any decorations they are all exactly the same.

 

Without starting another rant over stock shortage, I must stress that the Asus Radeon HD 5850 1GB is an excellent product and is unlikely to disappoint. Given a sensible retail price, I would have no quarms in recommending it as a future graphics card purchase. Well done Asus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All at OC3D would Like to Asus for supplying a Radeon HD 5850 for review. You can discuss further in our forums.