Shootouts

ATI Radeon HD 5830 - Plugging The Performance Gap, Again

By Kenny Yeo - 3 Jul 2010

Conclusion

A Decent Addition to the Family

By and large, the ATI has delivered with the Radeon HD 5830 and has done a decent job of filling the huge performance and price gap that has been left by the Radeon HD 5850 and HD 5770.

On the performance front, the Radeon HD 5830 finds itself smack in between the Radeon HD 5850 and HD 5770. Although it must be said that it has a tendency to lean towards the Radeon HD 5770 rather than the HD 5850, especially on higher resolution settings or when we enabled anti-aliasing.

However, it makes up for this shortcoming somewhat with its impressive overclocking performance. Although we cannot guarantee stability and reliability of the cards should they be running at the maximum clock speeds we've achieved, it's safe to say that a slight overclock of around 50 to 70MHz should be manageable, considering these cards all managed to easily hit 100MHz above their default core clock speeds.

With a retail price of around US$220, the Radeon HD 5830 also finds itself priced directly between the Radeon HD 5850 and HD 5770. So it's not really an attractive option, rather, it is a sensible addition to the Evergreen stable, since it offers a legitimate solution for users who can't justify paying the premium for the Radeon HD 5850 and yet is looking for something more than the Radeon HD 5770.

NVIDIA has nothing new at the US$220 price point, but we can't help but notice that the cheaper Radeon HD 5830 was, at times, able to give the more costly GeForce GTX 465 (US$279) a run for its money.

The new Radeon HD 5830 provides decent performance for its price, and does the job of filling the gap between the Radeon HD 5850 and HD 5770 well.

Locally, the Radeon HD 5830 is not as attractively priced seeing that it costs around S$380. The Radeon HD 5850 comes in at around S$430 and the less powerful Radeon HD 5770 is much more affordable at S$270. If you remember that the Radeon HD 5830's performance leans more towards the Radeon HD 5770, then S$380 is asking too much. So for local readers, it's better to stick either with the Radeon HD 5770, or stretch that little bit more and go for the Radeon HD 5850.

Overall, the Radeon HD 5830 is a decent new SKU by ATI and it serves its purpose of addressing the price and performance gap between the Radeon HD 5850 and HD 5770 well.

As for the individual cards, here's a quick summary of their clock speeds and price.

Card Core clock speed Memory clock speed Price
Gigabyte HD 5830 800MHz 4000MHz DDR US$219
HIS HD 5830 iCooler V Turbo 840MHz 4400MHz DDR US$250
MSI R5830 Twin Frozr II 800MHz 4000MHz DDR US$255

The HIS HD 5830 iCooler Turbo is our pick of the lot. Not only was it the fastest, it also provided the best overclocking potential, despite not having the high-end features that the MSI R5830 Twin Frozr II has. Furthermore at US$250, it also costs a tad less than the MSI card, which, all things considered, makes it quite good value for money. What's more, it comes with a redeemable copy of the hit game, Modern Warfare 2.

That said, the MSI R5830 Twin Frozr II, we feel is a bit on the pricey side. Coming with reference clock speeds was a bit of a disappointment, but what's even more disappointing is that even its overclocking ability was trumped by the HIS card. Of course, there's an element of luck involved where overclocking is concerned, but the fact is that the HIS costs less and delivers more.

Lastly, the Gigabyte HD 5830 is the most affordable card here and provided decent all round performance, so we have no complaints.

Final Ratings


 

The Gigabyte HD 5830

The MSI R5830 Twin Frozr II

The Radeon HD 5830 SKU

 

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