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| Introduction and Related Info | ||||||||||||||||||||
Here we are, barely two weeks removed from the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5570, and we find ourselves in the now familiar position of announcing yet another Radeon HD 5000 series card. With the breakneck pace (relatively speaking) of Radeon HD 5000 series releases over the past 5 or 6 months, it would be easy to dismiss today's launch of the Radeon HD 5830 as a move by AMD to simply use more marginal Cypress GPUs, thus increasing effective yields, while at the same time sticking it to NVIDIA yet again. But a quick look at the company's 5000-series product stack reveals the other major reason. Here's how the currently available cards in the Radeon HD 5000 series line up in terms of street price.
Much groundwork had to be laid over the preceding months and even years before AMD could produce the entire Radeon HD 5000 series of products. Although the GPU at the heart of the Radeon HD 5830 is based on the same architecture as the other members of the DX-11 class Radeon HD 5000 series, the chip does leverage technologies already implemented in previously released GPU generations, so it's not all new. As such, we'd recommend perusing some recent HotHardware articles to brush up on a few of the technologies and features employed by the new Radeon HD 5830...
The articles listed above cover many of the features available with the Radeon HD 5830, like the UVD 2 video engine, Catalyst Control Center, PowerPlay, GDDR5 memory, and more. There are also, however, many brand new things that were introduced with the Radeon HD 5800 series that we detailed in our Radeon HD 5870 coverage, so that article at the very least is a must-read companion to this one--well, if you want to get the full scoop anyway. |
| ATI Radeon HD 5830 |
As we've mentioned, the Radeon HD 5830 was designed to slot into AMD's graphics card line-up right in between the Radeon HD 5770 and the Radeon HD 5850. If you take a look at the specs in the table below, you'll see how AMD went about it.
The Radeon HD 5830 has the very same 2.15B transistor GPU at its heart as the Radeon HD 5850 and 5870. With the 5830, however, a number of stream processing units have been disabled, bringing the total active SP count down to 1120. The same 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1GHz (4.0Gbps effective) used on the 5850 makes its way onto the Radeon HD 5830, but the GPU clock on the 5830 is much higher--800MHz to be exact. Texture fillrate and compute performance for the 5830 is again somewhere in between the 5770 and 5850, but note that the Radeon HD 5830's raw pixel fillrate is actually a bit lower than the more affordable 5770. Also note, that the Radeon HD 5830 has a max board power of 175W, which is higher than the 5850. Despite having fewer Stream Processors, the higher GPU clock on the 5830 will result in higher peak power consumption.
AMD also pointed out that the Radeon HD 5830 will be shipping from multiple add in board partners with custom PCBs and coolers from the get-go. This is in stark contrast to a typical launch, which is usually comprised of nothing but reference cards outfitted with different decals. It's not until the second wave hits (if there is a second wave), that the custom versions of a particular card arrive. Although we tested a reference card for this article, physically, it was nothing like some of the partner Radeon HD 5830 boards coming down the pipeline. Above is an assortment of cards from a few well respected AIB partners. Notice the difference in size between the XFX card and some of the others.
The reference ATI Radeon HD 5830 we tested was virtually indistinguishable from a Radeon HD 5870, aesthetically speaking. The card was 10.5" long and featured a black fan shroud that encased the entire PCB. The card's cooler has a barrel fan that draws air into the shroud, where it is forced through the heatsink and partially exhausted from the system through vents in the card's mounting plate. Two more small vents at the back also direct some air within the system. |
| Test Setup and Unigine Heaven | ||||||||||||
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM: We tested the graphics cards in this article on an Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard powered by a Core i7 965 quad-core processor and 6GB of OCZ DDR3 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the system BIOS and set all values to their "optimized" or "high performance" default settings. Then we manually configured the memory timings and disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 was installed. When the installation was complete we fully updated the OS and installed the latest hotfixes, along with the necessary drivers and applications.
The three Radeons performed as expected in the Unigine Heaven benchmark. The new Radeon HD 5830 is sandwidched right in between the higher end 5850 and more affordable 5770. |
| 3DMark Vantage | ||||||
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| Enemy Territory: Quake Wars | ||||||
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| Crysis Performance | ||||||
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| FarCry 2 | ||||||
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| Left 4 Dead 2 | ||||||
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| Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. | ||||||
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| Total System Power Consumption | ||||
Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a few final data points--namely power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the graphics cards alone.
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| Our Summary and Conclusion | ||||
Performance Summary: All things considered, the Radeon HD 5830 proved to be a strong performer. At its expected $239 price point, the Radeon HD 5830's closest competition from NVIDIA is currently the GeForce GTX 275. In that match-up, strictly from a performance standpoint, the GeForce GTX 275 has a slight edge overall. In the games and applications we tested, the Radeon HD 5830 wins a few tests and the GeForce GTX 275 wins a few. But the GTX 275 pulled ahead more often than not. The deltas separating the two cards, however, were always relatively small. Factor in the Radeon HD 5830's lower power consumption, and support for DX11 and Eyefinity, however, and it easily becomes the better buy in our opinion.
When we started this article, we explained that the Radeon HD 5830 was being introduced to fill in the gap in the Radeon HD 5000 series separating the Radeon HD 5850 and the 5770. Looking back at the numbers, it's blatantly obvious that's exactly where the Radeon HD 5830 falls in AMD's current graphics card line-up in terms of performance. And with an SEP (suggested e-tail price) of $239, the Radeon HD 5830 falls smack dab in the middle of the $319-ish Radeon HD 5850 and $165-ish Radeon HD 5770 too.
So, with the Radeon HD 5000 series fully fleshed out and covering virtually every meaningful price point, you may think AMD is done with product launches for a while, but you'd be wrong. The Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is slated for release sometime in the not too distant future. As you can see in the slide above, the card is essentially the same as the current Radeon HD 5870, but with a larger 2GB frame buffer and of course, support for up to 6 monitors. Power consumption is marginally higher as well, due to the increased number of chips and outputs on the card.
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