Manufacturer: AMD Price: $ 250 US Author: Steve Date: 02/24/2010

[ Conclusion ]

The Radeon HD 5830 is a worthy addition to the Radeon HD 5000 series, providing an impressive level of performance at a slightly more affordable price tag when compared to the Radeon HD 5850. In fact, the Radeon HD 5830 slots in perfectly at the $250 US price range, placing a great deal of pressure on Nvidia’s fading GeForce GTX 200 series. The Radeon HD 5830 is set to come in about 17% cheaper than the 5850, and based on what we have seen it is on average 17% slower. So really, consumers are getting the same level of value with the Radeon HD 5830 as they would with the 5850, just at a cheaper price point. With performance to match the GeForce GTX 285, the Radeon HD 5830 makes more sense than the 5850 for users with 22” LCDs or smaller. At resolutions such as 1680x1050 or lower the Radeon HD 5830 is going to deliver the same gaming experience as the 5850 in most gaming titles. In virtually every game we tested, the highest possible in-game quality settings were enabled, with the exception of Crysis Warhead. For example, we saw 88fps rendered on average when playing Wolfenstein at 1680x1050 with 8xAA/8xAF enabled. Company of Heroes averaged 87fps, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat allowed for 65fps, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 received a whopping 90fps and Street Fighter IV an impressive 100fps. Almost every game we tested was able to average 60fps+ at 1680x1050, making the Radeon HD 5830 an ideal product for gamers running at this resolution or lower. Of course the Radeon HD 5830 was able to handle 1920x1200 with relative ease and even 2560x1600 produced playable performance in most games. Adding even more value to the Radeon HD 5830 is its overclocking ability, though this is still a bit of a gray area right now. Although we were able to reach a core clock of 900MHz and a memory clock of 1300MHz, it appears that AMD is limiting overclocking performance at the BIOS. Already this small overclock provided us with performance gains as high as 17%, but imagine if the core could reach 1GHz. At this stage it is not clear why AMD is limiting the overclocking performance of their graphics cards. Perhaps they are trying to avoid the throttling issue that we found when testing early samples of the Radeon HD 5970, though this is not an issue we have found troubling their single GPU solutions. Honestly, we have no idea why AMD are doing this, as it makes very little sense to shutout the enthusiasts. Still, being able to boost performance by as much as 17% for free does help add value to this graphics card. Also adding value to the Radeon HD 5830 will be the custom designs that graphics card manufacturers come up with. Already we have seen some pretty impressive looking cooler setups, and if these cards can be had for $250 US or less, we suspect that quite a number of you are going to have a hard time resisting a shiny new Radeon HD 5830 graphics card.

<- Previous Page Table of Contents Introduction The Card Test: Test System Specs & 3Dmark Vantage Test: Batman Arkham Asylum, Call of Duty Test: Company of Heroes, Crysis Warhead Test: Dawn of War, Far Cry 2 Test: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X, Resident Evil 5 Test: Street Fighter IV, World in Conflict Test: Wolfenstein Overclocking Performance Power Consumption & Temperatures >>> Conclusion <<<

ProX	Posted on: 03/01/2010 07:23 AM Nvidia needs to release their next-gen cards so pricing will come down on cards like this. The Radeon HD 5830 is a nice card but its still too expensive!