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Powercolor Radeon HD5850 PCS+ Video Card review

The events of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat unfold shortly after the end of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl following the ending in which Strelok destroys the C-Consciousness. Having discovered the open path to the Zone’s center, the government decides to stage a large-scale operation to take control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

According to the operation’s plan, the first military group is to conduct an air scouting of the territory to map the anomalous fields. Thereafter, making use of the maps, the main military forces are to be dispatched.

Despite thorough preparations, the operation fails. Most of the advanced helicopters crash. In order to collect information on the reasons for the operation’s failure, Ukraine’s Security Service send their agent (protagonist – Alexander Degtyarev) into the Zone. From now on everything depends on the player.

The player must traverse through the Zone and investigate the crash sites. As the player progresses he starts learning how the helicopters were shot down. The climax of the story begins when the player reaches Pripyat to find survivors of the helicopter crashes. The player eventually meets Strelok from the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game (Shadow of Chernobyl) and learns of the secrets behind the Zone.

This game uses the XRAY 1.6 Engine which allows for advanced graphics features through DX11 such as real time GPU tessellation. We set MSAA to 4x and enabled tessellation. Ambient Occlusion was also enabled.

Again the results are close with the Sapphire card leading the pack, only slightly. The only card to remain perfectly playable however at these settings is the HD5870 series, so we will look later at overclocking all of these cards over their pre-overclocked settings to see if we can get this title perfectly smooth and playable.

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19 comments

  1. Thats a sweet ass card, almost all the HD5850s overclock like hell, mine hits 850 and 1200 ram too 🙂 and its reference, gets a bit hot though

  2. great review, covered all the bases. I agree HD5850 is much better than GTX465. cheaper too which I cant believe

  3. The problem I have with ATI cards, no matter how good they are, is the drivers. I know they are meant to be better than 2 years ago, but I will never forget the issues I had with my media center and infinite loops. never again.

  4. I think the cooler is actually quite ugly, Saapphier card looks much better

  5. good price, but id still rather go for the 5870 and overclock that. can get some good overclocks with those cards too. its only £80 more I think.

  6. excuse english, anyone have france retailers with this in stock?

  7. Fermi is still good, I hate the way people knock it all the time. its very fast – GTX465 is great value

  8. @ Terry – what world are you living in? GTX465 is slower, hotter, more expensive than the HD5850. why would you buy it ?

  9. Temperatures are really good actually, seems a better deal than the Sapphire. what about noise? I dont see any ratings? louder or quieter than Sapphire?

  10. whats the noise like? is it acceptable when overclocked?

  11. Good review, like the card. good price too

  12. Still dont see a need to upgrade from my last gen card. im happy with 8800

  13. Fringe benefit

    Seems quite dear still, I like the 5770, but I dont game at 1920x or 2560x . I might add another 5770 to my system though, crossfire anygood ?

  14. Quality review – you are certainly pumping them out lately Z man.

  15. Wouldn’t touch this make, they seem very generic far east, not a european supported brand.

  16. prefer sapphire, even for the £20 more. better cooler, better company, I would think.

  17. Actually you guys are wrong – most of these cards are all made by the same handful of companies in the far east, then ‘farmed’ out to the various companies we buy them from. All basically made by the same people. I have had powercolor boards in the past, never had a problem. Dont be so narrow minded

  18. another great review.