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
Conclusion
The 5830 is a card that the public has had some very high expectations for coming in to this launch. The 4830 – as short lived as it was – was a well received card even if it wasn’t an immediate bargain. For anyone expecting a repeat performance on the 5830, we can’t help but feel that you’re going to come away disappointed.
On a global average, the 5830 sits about half-way between a 4890 and a 4870, or if you prefer is about 8% slower than a GTX 275 and 20% slower than a 5850. The latter is particularly interesting since it comes so close to the 5850 even though it only has 55% of the ROP capacity; clearly the hit to the ROPs didn’t hurt too badly.
At any rate, I had been expecting something that would consistently be to the north of the 4890 in performance, but the performance is what it is – there’s no bad card, only a poorly priced card.
And a poorly priced card is really what does the 5830 in. AMD expects this card to go for $240, a mere $20 below the original MSRP for the 5850; if one goes by the original MSRP of the 5850 this card is much too slow for the price. Conversely the 5830 is around 10% slower than the 4890, a card that was going for between $180 and $200 before supplies seemingly ran dry. The only price comparison where $240 makes sense is compared to the 5850’s current $300 price – you get 80% of the performance for 80% of the price. But the 5850 is priced for profit taking, it’s a fast card but it’s not a great deal.
When we were being briefed about this card, AMD’s (and former Beyond3D guru) Dave Baumann asked us to get back to him on what we thought the card should be priced at once we finished our testing. Our response to him, and the same thing that we’re holding to in this review, is that the sweet spot for this card would be $200, and the highest should be $220. $200 is a sweet spot because it picks up where the 4890 left off, even if it is around 10% slower. $220 on the other hand places a greater valuation on the 5000 series feature set, and is closer to the GTX 275.
Dave’s argument (and undoubtedly one that will resonate throughout AMD) is that the 5830 has some very useful advantages over the 4890 – DX/DirectCompute 11, Eyefinity, better OpenCL support, and bitstreaming audio. All of this is true, although the 5830 strikes us as a poor choice for Eyefinity usage (get something faster) or for bitstreaming audio (it’s not exactly a cool HTPC card). DX11 and OpenCL is harder to evaluate due to their newness, and in the case of OpenCL AMD doesn’t even distribute their OpenCL driver with the rest of their Catalyst driver set yet.
Meanwhile there’s a separate argument entirely over whether the 5830 is more future-proof (disregarding DX11) due to its higher shader throughput. Historically speaking this is a reasonable argument, but it’s also one that I’m not convinced will hold up when NVIDIA is going to be pushing tessellation instead of shading – you can’t ignore what NVIDIA’s doing given their clearly stronger developer relations.
Ultimately the problem is that being future proof comes at too high a price. The 5770 was a hard sale compared to the faster 4870, and this time we’re talking about what’s around a $60 premium based on performance over the 4000 series. AMD’s saving grace here is that you can no longer buy such a card – it’s either a GTX260/4870, or nothing.
At the risk of sounding petty over $20, a $240 5830 is $20 too much. If this were priced at $200-$220 it wouldn’t be a clear choice for the 5830, but it wouldn’t be such a clear choice against it. For $240 you can try to shop around for a 4890 and save $40-$60 while getting a card that will perform better at most of today’s games, or save even more by going with a 4870 that will slightly underperform the 5830. Alternatively you can save up another $60 and get the 5850, a card that is faster running and cooler running at the same time. There is no scenario where we can wholeheartedly justify a 5830 if it’s going to be a $240 card – this really should have been the new $200 wonder card.
Update: It looks like AMD's partners have been able to come through and make this a hard launch. PowerColor and Sapphire cards have started showing up at Newegg. So we're very happy to report that this didn't turn out to be a paper launch after all. Do note however that the bulk of the cards are still not expected until next week.
This brings up the other elephant in the room: today’s paper launch. Paper launches should by all means have died last year, but their ghost apparently continues to live on. If in fact no 5830s make it to retailers in time for today’s launch, then the card should not have been launched today – it’s as simple as that.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
The article was amended as soon as I woke up this morning.Teemax - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I agreed with the conclusion. HD 5830 is overpriced for its performance.I hope Anand will be equally tough on NVIDIA's cards when they come. Overpriced GPUs stink.
Slaimus - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I would guess it is priced high so it would limit demand. It is probably just a stop gap production to exhaust the supply of bad chips. Once Nvidia releases competitive products, the price compression would just squeeze this card off the long run.If it was too good of a deal, they would be forced to keep supplying it even when the future yields become good.
It is a relevant product if you need to build a system now, but cannot afford a 5850.
psychobriggsy - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
A paper launch is something released to review, with the product not showing up in the shops for *many* weeks, whilst the company isn't saying anything about it.Here we have the company saying "they'll be available next week" and giving a perfectly valid reason (get your reviews done before you're all shipped off to cebit), and you're getting all pious.
Get some sense of scale. If three cards get shipped next week, then call it a paper launch. If thousands get shipped next week, then it's not a paper launch. If Nvidia ship 1000 Fermis on day 1, and none for a month, that's a paper launch, but would you call them out on it?
kwrzesien - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
Agreed. Cards are available on newegg NOW!http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...;cm_re=a...
You WON'T find them under the video guided search, not a category yet. Maybe the paper launch should have started a few days ago!
kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
Someone else has mentioned it, but I have to concur your reviews lately of ATI/AMD products have been overly negative. I personally buy Nvidia products because I prefer thier Linux drivers to ATI's. However, while I've been waiting for Fermi, it does seem the driver article which was unbelievably negative considering it was a driver release designed to improve the driver situation and this article go way too far to prove a point which eschews the whole picture of the situation.While I agree the 5830 should be priced better, when you look at what Nvidia is offering (or not offering) it makes sense. First, the 260/216 is barely available at all. Niether is the 275. The 285 is going for nearly $400 and is outclassed by a $300 ATI product (which was referred to as not a good deal). If you want to talk about weird pricing on what is basically an technologically obsolete product that would be it. I personally couldn't believe ATI's desire to "profit-taking" was even mentioned at all for a 20 - 40 dollar difference between horrible and ideal. Care to guess what the 260 and 275 prices were when they released? Try $449 and $600+, how big of an objection was raised to that?
While I understand the desire to make sure every reviewer gets their Fermi card for review this isn't the way to do it, considering it's almost 6 months late. If we want lower prices nothing would be better than for the other half of the equation (Nvidia) to do their job as well. Just a thought.
Voo - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
So you think the 5830 is nicely priced and you would love to buy one? Really? You would pay 240$ for that level of performance?I don't think Ryan is the fanboy here, sorry. Also I'd love some examples from the other articles were Ryan was "especially negative" about Ati without any reason.
kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
If you're not going to pay attention to what I said in an effort to prove a point then there's really no need to respond further.I said "While I agree the 5830 should be priced better" basically saying yes it could be lower. However, there's a difference in looking for a deal within ATI's lineup versus looking for a deal throughout the entire video card market. I specifically said that I bought Nvidia cards for a reason. At this time I cannot upgrade my video card. Why? Because if you like to buy a DX11 card from Nvidia you can't. Not only that but their cards are way over priced right now where this card competes. Even if I wanted to ignore the functionality, I can't ignore the performance.
The 285 goes for 400 (380 and some change) dollars and the 5850 beats it at 300 dollars. That's a $100 difference before you even look at the 5830. I'll say it again the 5830 isn't much of a deal within ATI's own lineup. However, when looking at what's purchasable within Nvidia's lineup it's priced accordingly. If you were to put prices over the benchmarks you would see a $150+ gap between a 285 and a 260/216. Essentially they (ATI) are charging you $40 for Eyefinity and Dx11 with performance that's slightly better than the 216 which sells between $189 - $200 (if you can find it in abundance). I'd hardly call that highway robbery.
Voo - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
So you're agreeing with the main criticsm of this review and still call it unfair? For me a card either has good value or not - independent if the "better" card comes from the same company or not.We all know that Nvidia has no interesting cards in the >200$ bracket, but that doesn't mean that any card >200$ from Ati is automatically a hit.
The first thing I thought when I read the part about "yeah but this card has eyefinity, DX11,.." was, that if you substituted that for CUDA and Physix you had a perfect Nvidia marketing speech ;)
kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
"So you're agreeing with the main criticsm of this review and still call it unfair? "Same here what would give you the impression that wouldn't be the case for me? First off I don't care per se what manufacturer makes the card. My preference is with Nvidia, but I'm not going to intentionally buy an obsolete card costing upwards of $200. We are not talking budget cards here.
Let me break it down as to why the 5850 is probably the best value out there right now (even though I don't own one).
Nvidia 200/200b GPU
GTX 280 debut price - $649
GTX 260 debut price - $449
ATI 5xxx GPU
5870 debut price - $389
5850 debut price - $279
(those prices reflect the actual possible at release not what the manufacturer quoted)
Do you see the difference? It's just as crazy to say that any >$200 card that ATI releases is a hit, as it is to not recognise that the prices are FAR LOWER then what they normally have been in the past, and not include that reality in your determination of what is value. The 5830 isn't what I would call value, however for the performance of the 5850 (which was also mentioned) it just doesn't make sense to not see the value in that card.