Initially scheduled for the 5th of February, we had to wait almost 3 weeks before AMD would unleash their latest performance based Radeon HD 5000 series graphics card using the Cypress LE core. The reason for the delay is not quite clear and of course there are a few different theories floating around.

Some say that AMD is simply toying with Nvidia in a bid to intimidate them, and others think that it was a supply issue. It is unlikely this new product is going to intimidate Nvidia any more than the current high-end Radeon HD 5000 series already is. Furthermore, supply issues have never stopped AMD before, in fact the entire current generation lineup is still suffering from supply issues.

What we think might have happened here is that AMD was giving the AIB (Add-In-Board) partners time to prepare their products. Whereas AMD typically spits out the first few batches of new products which they distribute to their partners, the new Radeon HD 5830 is to be designed entirely by the partners.

Therefore today we should see a number of new uniquely designed Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards hitting the market. This makes this launch a little more exciting than previous launches, as consumers can purchase what are normally considered special edition cards straight away. Rather than having to wait a couple of months for improved versions to appear with upgraded coolers, they will become available immediately.

However upgraded coolers and modified PCB designs are not the only things the new Radeon HD 5830 has going for it. The Radeon HD 5830 is set to become the most affordable member of the Radeon HD 5800 series, shaving about $50 US off the price of existing Radeon HD 5850 products. Although the Radeon HD 5830 is a cut down version of the 5850, which is of course a cut down version of the 5870, it is still quite an impressive product.

In fact, the new Radeon HD 5830 and the 5850 are actually much more alike than we were expecting, which is encouraging. Prior to the arrival of the Radeon HD 5830 the $135 US price gap between the Radeon HD 5770 and 5850 graphics cards was being filled by the older Radeon HD 4890. That said, old Radeon HD 4890 stock has now all but dried up.

Furthermore, the GeForce GTX 275 represented better value than the Radeon HD 4890 in this price range. Therefore users looking to spend between $200 - $250 US were stuck for options. Given AMD has a Radeon HD 5000 series graphics card for almost every occasion, it was only a matter of time before they would address this price range.

With a price tag of $250 US, the Radeon HD 5830 should easily lay waste to both the GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 graphics cards, and should even be competitive with the much more expensive GeForce GTX 285 graphics card. The Radeon HD 5830 is going to be an important graphics card for AMD, so we hope it can deliver...

Therefore we were expecting a graphics card with the model number 5830 to measure no more than 24cm long, while it was half expected that the card would be about 22-23cm long. However when we took it out of the box the Radeon HD 5830 appeared much longer than this, and it was. Unexpectedly, the AMD reference sample measures the same length as the 5870, 28cm long.

In fact the reference sample of the Radeon HD 5830 that we received was identical to the 5870 in every way. At first we just assumed that because the AIB (Add-In-Board) partners were designing their own boards AMD just stuck their sample cards on the 5870 PCB. However having looked at Radeon HD 5830 products from Gigabyte, HIS, PowerColor and Sapphire, it appears that most 5830 graphics cards will measure 28cm long.

There is no real explanation for why the Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards are so long when the 5850 cards are 4cm shorter. The Radeon HD 5830 does consume more power than the 5850 cards under load, around 16% more, so perhaps this could be the reason behind the longer PCB design.

Still, we expect clever manufacturers to come up with a more compact design. Actually, we have already seen photos of a Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards from XFX which measures just 17cm. Unfortunately, at this stage we have only seen photos of this product and the specifications have not been confirmed. Still, if XFX have been able to reduce the length by almost 40%, that really would be something.

Getting back to the Radeon HD 5830 that we have in hand, this sample features a fairly large aluminum heatsink that is made up of 36 fins measuring 13.5cm long, 6.5cm wide, and 2.5cm tall. Connected to the base of the heatsink are four copper heatpipes which help improve efficiency. Cooling this heatsink is a 75x20mm blower fan that draws air in from within the case and pushes it out through the rear of the graphics card.

Like the Radeon HD 5850, we have found that the Radeon HD 5830 is a very quiet graphics card when at idle. With a claimed idle consumption level of just 27 watts, the Radeon HD 5870 has little reason to make any noise at idle. However when we began to game, the fan did spin up and make quite a noise, though it was similar to that of other high-end Radeon graphics cards, so nothing unusual here.

The new Radeon HD 5830 uses a 40nm design which was first introduced by AMD with the Radeon HD 4770. This has allowed AMD to be quite aggressive with the core speed, clocking it at 800MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a more impressive frequency of 1000MHz on this particular model. The GPU configuration features an impressive 1120 SPUs, along with 56 TAUs (Texture Address Units) and 16 ROPs (Rasterization Operator Units).

As me mentioned a moment ago, the Radeon HD 5830 can consume up to 175 watts of power when pushed hard. In order to feed the graphics card enough power AMD has included a pair of 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. This is the same configuration that you will find on the older Radeon HD 4870/4890 and GeForce GTX 285 graphics cards for example.

The Radeon HD 5830 also supports Crossfire technology, and therefore in the standard position is a pair of Crossfire connectors for bridging two or more cards together. The only other connectors can be found on the I/O panel, and our AMD sample featured two dual DVI connectors, along with a HDMI and Display Port connection. It is worth noting that all Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards can support a maximum resolution of 2560x1600 on not one but rather three monitors.

Hardware - Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition (Overclocked @ 3.70GHz) - x3 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 9-9-9-24) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) - Radeon HD 5770 (1GB) - GeForce GTX 260 (896MB) - Radeon HD 4890 (1GB) - Radeon HD 5770 (1GB) Crossfire - Radeon HD 5830 (1GB) - GeForce GTX 275 (896MB) - Radeon HD 4870 X2 (2GB) - GeForce GTX 285 (1GB) - Radeon HD 5850 (1GB) - GeForce GTX 295 (1792MB) - Radeon HD 5870 (1GB) - Radeon HD 5970 (2GB) - Radeon HD 5870 (1GB) Crossfire - Asus P6T Deluxe (Intel X58) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 196.34 - ATI Catalyst 10.1 - ATI 8.703 RC2 Win7 Vista (Feb11)

According to 3Dmark Vantage the Radeon HD 5830 is 12% faster than the GeForce GTX 285, which can be seen at 2560x1600. This is an impressive result as it meant that the Radeon HD 5830 is just 4% slower than the 5850 with a score of 4848pts. Given that the Radeon HD 5830 should be replacing the Radeon HD 4890 in terms of pricing, the 37% performance boost is impressive.

The Batman Arkham Asylum performance is not quite as impressive as what we saw when testing with 3Dmark Vantage. Nonetheless, the Radeon HD 5830 was still 9% faster than the 4890 at 2560x1600. That said, it was also 5% slower than the GeForce GTX 275 and 12% slower than the GTX 285. As a result the Radeon HD 5830 was 14% slower than its bigger brother the Radeon HD 5850.

The Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 results are very impressive, as the Radeon HD 5830 defeated the old 4890 by a 19% margin, while it was just 5% slower than the GeForce GTX 285. Moreover, the Radeon HD 5830 trailed the 5850 by a relatively small 6% performance margin, which at 2560x1600 equated to just 4fps, which is not a lot when we are talking about performance above 60fps.

The Radeon HD 5830 is able to match the GeForce GTX 275 when testing with Company of Heroes at 2560x1600, making it just 4% or 2fps faster than the Radeon HD 4890. While the Radeon HD 5830 was found to be 11% slower than the GeForce GTX 285, it was also 29% slower than the Radeon HD 5850, which worked out to be 20fps.

Although the Crysis Warhead results at 2560x1600 are very poor, and we are not just talking about the Radeon HD 5830 here, similar performance trends were seen at all three tested resolutions. The Radeon HD 5830 matched the performance of the Radeon HD 4890 and GeForce GTX 275, while it was just 2fps slower than the GeForce GTX 285 and Radeon HD 5850 at 2560x1600.

The Radeon HD 5830 performed considerably better than the previous generation Radeon HD 4800 series graphics cards when testing with Dawn of War II. At 2560x1600 we saw an average of 40fps which allowed the Radeon HD 5830 to match the GeForce GTX 275, while it was just 7% slower than the GeForce GTX 285. Furthermore, while the Radeon HD 5830 may have been 17% slower than the 5850, it was 25% faster than the Radeon HD 4890.

The Far Cry 2 frame rates are very low, much like they were when testing with Crysis Warhead. That said, please note that for this test 8xAA is enabled, which has a significant impact on frame rates. As such the Radeon HD 5830 averaged just 36fps at 1680x1050 and 20fps at 2560x1600. This meant that the Radeon HD 5830 was 29% slower than the Radeon HD 5850 and GeForce GTX 285 graphics cards.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. was tested using maximum in-game quality settings with 4xAA enabled. Please note that all Nvidia cards were tested using DX10, while the ATI cards used DX10.1, other than this everything else was the same. As you can see, the Radeon HD 5830 was reportedly slower than the Radeon HD 4890 in this test, which is the first time we have seen this.

Interestingly, the older Radeon HD 4890 graphics cards perform very well here and the Radeon HD 4890 even beats the 5850. The Radeon HD 5830 was able to match the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 285 graphics cards at 2560x1600 with 39fps, so overall not a bad result.

For the second time we find that the Radeon HD 5830 has been bested by the older Radeon HD 4890 when testing with Resident Evil 5. With an average of 47fps at 2560x1600, the Radeon HD 5830 was just 4% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 and just 2% slower than the GeForce GTX 285, while it did trail the Radeon HD 5850 by a 20% performance margin.

The Radeon HD 5830 was 16% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 at 2560x1600 when testing with Street Fighter IV, rendering an average of 92fps. This made the Radeon HD 5830 roughly 17% slower than the Radeon HD 5850. Interestingly, for some reason the Nvidia based GeForce graphics cards really struggle with this game and the GeForce GTX 285 rendered just 61fps.

World in Conflict was another game where we saw the Radeon HD 5830 fall behind the Radeon HD 4890, this time by an 11% performance margin, as the 5830 was only able to match the 4870. This made the Radeon HD 5830 exactly 20% slower than the 5850 at 2560x1600.

Wolfenstein has been tested with 8xAA/8xAF enabled and as a result the average frame rates of the mid-range cards do dip below 60fps at 2560x1600. Still, at 1920x1200 the Radeon HD 5830 spat out an impressive 71fps on average, allowing it to match the performance of the GeForce GTX 285. The Radeon HD 5830 was 17% slower than the Radeon HD 5850, while it did beat the Radeon HD 4890 by a 13% margin.

The Radeon HD 5570 core we imagine would easily reach 800MHz without much trouble, and the fact that AMD has almost completely disabled overclocking, removes a great deal of value from this product. When testing the Radeon HD 5830 we did unfortunately encounter the same overclocking limitations that were in place on the slower 5570 and 5450 graphics cards.

That said, the headroom was much greater, as we were allowed to increase the core frequency by 100MHz and the memory 300MHz. Still, this mild overclock did help boost performance by a respectable margin.

The overclock allowed the Radeon HD 5830 to match the performance of the GeForce GTX 285 in Company of Heroes, boosting the average frame by 12% to 56fps. Then when testing with S.T.A.L.K.E.R we saw a 17% performance increase, which actually allowed the Radeon HD 5830 to overtake the 5850.

The Radeon HD 5830 consumed 6% less power than the Radeon HD 4890 when under load, while it matched the load consumption level of the 4870. Despite being slower than the Radeon HD 5850, the Radeon HD 5830 actually uses more power due to its higher operating frequency. As a result we saw a 13% greater load consumption level.

The Radeon HD 5830 review sample received from AMD featured the same PCB design and cooler as that of the Radeon HD 5870. Therefore it is no surprise to find that the 5830 operates at similar temperatures to that of the 5870 and even the 5850. While these results are accurate, they are somewhat irrelevant, as AMD partners will be using their own cooling solutions for their Radeon HD 5830 products.

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.