AMD HD5830 – bridging the gap

The HD5830 aims to bridge the gap between the HD5770 and the HD5850 both when it comes to price and performance.

INTRODUCTION

AMD has been busy the last 6 months releasing a lot of DirectX11 cards for every market segment from the cheap and slow HD5450 up to the expensive and fast HD5970. If we look at the range of products released we notice that there is a big gap between the 170$ HD5770 and the 300$ HD5850. While we are still waiting for NVIDIA to release their first two Fermi products at the end of March AMD is taking the opportunity to release yet another card to fill that gap: the HD5830. As the name implies this is a card that sits between the HD5770 and the HD5850 both when it comes to performance and price.

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

Since AMD already has released at least 7 HD5xxx cards it is starting to get a bit repetitive to tell you about the specifications and features but here we go again.

As we can see the cards slots in almost perfectly between the HD5770 and the HD5830. We see a few odd discrepancies though. The pixel fillrate and the Z/Stencil fillrate is lower on the HD5830 than the HD5770 which is odd as the rest of the specs are better on the HD5830. The HD5830 also looks like it needs more power than the HD5850, at least at full load.

The features are the same as all the other HD5xxx-cards:

DirectX11

There is no arguing that DirectX11 is taking off much better than DirectX10 ever did. Part of the reason is of course that it is available on both Vista and Windows 7 as well as the fact that Windows 7 has been much more successful than Vista was when it came out. We already have a bunch of DirectX 11 games out (for example Dirt 2, Stalker: Call of Pripiat) and we have a bunch waiting to come out in 2010. The fact that NVIDIA finally will release their own high-end DirectX 11 card will of course help push developers to use it even more.

Eyefinity

Eyefinity lets you combine up to three monitors to the card and let the computer see them as one huge monitor. AMD has worked hard to improve Eyefinity since the launch of the HD5850 and HD5870 and the latest drives has lots of improvements including better support for CrossfireX and Eyefinity.
 

CUSTOMIZED AIB BOARDS DESIGNS – BOARD SHOTS

AMD usually provide AIB’s with a reference design which means they can bring out cards quicker since they do not have to spend time designing their own boards. With the HD5830 AMD is not providing the reference design which is why we will see customized board designs from all the AIB’s. This is also most probably the reason why AMD has not had a lot of review boards to send out in time for the launch date today. We are ourselves waiting for a board from XFX and hope to be able to bring you the review as soon as possible.

Here are some photos of HD5830 from various AIB’s:

The HD5830 from Gigabyte will come with their Ultra Durable VGA feature as well as their own special cooling fan.

HIS used to offer Dirt 2 with many of their previous HD5xxx-cards but with the HD5830 they will instead bundle the game Modern Warfare 2.

The HD5830 from PowerColor has yet another type of cooling which looks similar to the one on the Sapphire card.

Here we see the HD5830 from Sapphire. The cooler looks similar to the one on the card from PowerColor.

The HD5830 from XFX looks very different from all the other cards. Not only does it have a weird-looking cooler but the card seems to be much shorter than any of the other cards. It should be this card that we will review a bit later.
 

PERFORMANCE

As we mentioned we haven’t actually been able to get ourselves a board in time for the launch. There has been rumors of issues with the boards but it is hard to find any solid info on why there have been so few boards been sent out in time for the launch. We hope that this does not mean that consumers have to wait too long for the first boards to appear.

AMD provided us with an summary on how much faster the HD5830 should be than the HD5770 and how much slower than the HD5850.

Click for larger image

The system used for these benchmarks is:

CPU: AMD PhenomII 965 (3.4GHz)
Motherboard:ASUS M4A79TT
RAM: 4GB DDR2-800 (5-5-5-15)
OS: Windows®7 RTM x64
Video Cards: ATI Radeon™ HD 5850 1GB GDDR5
ATI Radeon™ HD 5830 1GB GDDR5
ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 1GB GDDR5
Driver: 8.701_100122a-094689E-ATI

According to these benchmarks the HD5830 should perform 15-25% better than the HD5770. When we get our card we will of course verify these numbers.

CONCLUSION

The HD5830 certainly looks like a interesting card on paper. It bridges the gap between the HD5770 and the HD5850 nicely with a expected retail price around $250/€230. The main question right now is when cards will be arriving in the stores as the lack of review boards itself points towards a lack of supply at the time of writing.