AMD’s Radeon HD 5830: A Filler Card at the Wrong Price
by Ryan Smith on February 24, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power & Temperature
Since AMD isn’t doing a reference Radeon HD 5830, non-performance data is of limited value. Even with the variety of cards among AMD’s partners, the power draw of the 5830 cards should be within a few watts of each other and vary only with the difference in their fans so long as they use a 5870 PCB. On the other hand temperature data is going to heavily depend on the cooler used, and noise data is completely useless here since it entirely depends on the cooler used.
So we have power and temperature data for you, but please keep in mind that this temperature data is really only useful as a frame of reference – retail cards could be quite dissimilar.
At idle, the power usage is just as AMD promised: it’s a hair under the 5850, by a single watt to be exact. As far as high-end cards go, this is the least power hungry among them when idling.
Under load the story is quite a bit more interesting. We know the 5830 is rated for a TDP between the 5850 and 5870 that’s much closer to the 5870, but the power draw doesn’t reflect that. Here it’s 17W over the 5850, and nearly 70W off the 5870. We’ve double checked and the card isn’t throttling (a very possible situation given the higher voltage used) so we’re not quite sure what to make of these results. The 5830 is apparently more alike the 5850 than the 5870 when it comes to power consumption, which is certainly a good thing since it means it edges out the 4870 and 4890, and is well ahead of the GTX 275.
With an eye on the fact that this temperature data is going to be heavily dependent on the cooler used, for our sample card we certainly have some interesting results. Under idle this is the coolest of our high-end cards, which is no surprise given the use of the 5870’s big cooler and the lower idle power usage of the 5830. On the other hand under load, even with the otherwise minor difference in power draw compared to the 5850 and the bigger cooler it’s 5C hotter, which is actually more in-line with what we would have expected. However it still stays below the 4800 series and the 5870, both of which get warm enough that they really have to rev up their fans.
It’ll be interesting to see just how good the vendor coolers end up being. With the relatively low load power usage, the 5830 doesn’t have to be a particularly loud card.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
148 Comments
View All Comments
pierrebai - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
This is ridiculous and a poor service. The old drivers are more in tune with older cards. If I buy a new card, I would install the newer drivers do I that's what I want to see compared.It makes me doubt the honesty of the review: it makes you look like you wre pissed by the paper launch and chose to use old drivers to make the card look bad.
Did you use 5-months-old drivers for nvidia cards too?
leexgx - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
did they even have the older cards i would if guessed that 9.9 for the 4890 was due to them not having the cardsRyan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
No, we have them. We do a rolling benchmark suite; if you've pay attention to our charts we do what amounts to adding new cards to existing charts, as it's impractical to rebench every card with every driver change. We do rebench cards if we find that the drivers change performance significantly, but that's actually rarely the case.Otherwise everything gets refreshed at the 6 month mark. So that's why the 9.9s go with the 4000 series cards, because that's when this data was originally compiled.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I believe what Ryan is saying is that he *did* use the latest drivers with the 5830. I don't believe the older drivers will even install on the card. The older drivers were just used on the 4xxx series cards, not the 5830.Take care,
Anand
Drazick - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
It seems that if you used the latest drivers you would have found that its performances are equal to the HD4890.Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
We did. We used the review drivers AMD sent us, version 8.703RC2.Drazick - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
According to what you wrote you used 9.9 for all ATI's Cards.So I don't get it, did you use 10.2 for the HD5XXX?
ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
While this is a good review, I'd suggest that people who're looking to buy a card check out other reviews of it, too. I was just reading the TechSpot one, and it looks like if you're a CoD 6 fan (and it's been a best selling game), then the 5830 beats the 4890 by a long run and is close to the 5850. So while it's not as well rounded as the 5850, the 5830 might still have its place. (Though I agree I'd love to see all these prices come down.)ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
BTW, two other games where it beat the 4890 well in that review were Wolfenstein and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat. In the latter the 5830 is about twice as fast as the 4890 and quite close to the 5850.bill4 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
Stop crying, over what is barely a paper launch at all. It seems you yourself aren't even sure that cards wont hit etail today. And my memory is fuzzy, but havent several recent AMD and Nvidia launches in the past year been "paper"? The difference is recently it's by a week or two instead of a month plus as in the past.If you dont like it so much, put your money where your mouth is and refuse to review the card until it's available. I'm betting plenty of your competitors will always be more than willing to review any "paper launch", so the only one losing would be you, as it should be.
On to the card..I agree with your view there. I have a 4890, had I been in the market for a $200-ish card today, 5830 might have been a good choice. But I would take it even farther than you and say the card doesn't really become compelling until maybe as low as $170. Especially given it's major ROP crippling would just leave me uneasy about it's performance in future games. This leaves 5850 as still the only real "budget" choice imo. Save up 300 or dont bother. Heck I think even a 5770 is a better deal than this.
I suppose, if you are in the market for a Dx11 card and have $240 and not a penny more, you now have a faster choice. Dubious honor, though.