ATI Radeon HD 5830 1GB DX11 Video Card Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

AMD has not only announced the Radeon HD 5830, but they have also stated that the card will be immediately available in the retail channel. This is great news as this is not a paper launch. The ATI Radeon HD 5830 will carry an SEP of $239, which helps fill the rather large price gap between the Radeon HD 5770 and the Radeon HD 5850 graphics cards. The lowest priced Radeon HD 5770 that we could find on the retail market is the POWERCOLOR AX5770 at $142.99 shipped. The lowest priced Radeon HD 5850 also happens to be a POWERCOLOR Radeon AX850 at $299.99 shipped. Anyone that has shopped for a DirectX 11 capable graphics card is likely to notice that the price more than doubles to go from the Radeon HD 5770 to the Radeon HD 5850 series. This $157 price jump is a bit much, so it is nice to see a card like the Radeon HD 5830 nearly split the price gap and come in at the $239 price point.

When it comes to performance, the Radeon HD 5830 didn’t exactly split the difference between the two series, but it did come close. We found the card to be roughly 10-20% faster than the Radeon HD 5770 depending on the benchmark. The Radeon HD 5830 was also an amazing overclocker as we were able to increase the clock frequencies from 800MHz/1000MHz to 875MHz/1200MHz in just seconds by using the ATI Overdrive utility. This was enough to boost graphics performance by nearly 9%, so the card has plenty of room for enthusiasts to overclock them higher. Even with the Radeon HD 5830 overclocked as high as we could get it in ATI Overdrive, it still wasn’t enough for the card to catch up to the Radeon HD 5850 as we showed in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat benchmark.

That being said, the Radeon HD 5830 is a strange card. In a nutshell: The Radeon HD 5830 is, shall we say, a broken Radeon HD 5870. AMD won’t like us saying that, but this is clearly the fallout from the Radeon HD 5870 binning process. The Printed Circuit Board (PCB), Heat Sink Fan (HSF), and GPU architecture are all the same with the exception of a few areas of the core being disabled and the board having a new BIOS on it. The only downside to this is that the Radeon HD 5830 is longer than the Radeon HD 5850 and uses more power while it’s at it. If you can get over the power efficiency and can fit a card that is 11.1″ in your PC, then the Radeon HD 5830 might be the card for you.

Legit Bottom Line: The Radeon HD 5830 video card is the 11th card in the Radeon HD 5000 series, and while it doesn’t bring any new features to the table, it is a gap filler at the $239 price point.