Anand's 5830 Review!! Benches and all!! Anand is disappoint with this card!!

[v8envy]

I think people got spoiled with the HD4000s pricing. Just stop bringing that up. Just because you bought a 4890 for $175 doesn't mean you'll get the same performance per dollar next time around. Don't be greedy. Now that said, I am a bit disappointed about its performance. Hopefully its some kind of anomaly in drivers or something.

We expect deflation in computer hardware pricing, at least on a performance/$ standpoint. All computer hardware has historically increased in performance or decreased in price, or both.

This is why the 5 series are largely a disappointment to many. The performance boost over the 4 series is marginal, but the price increase is quite large. ATI's marketing feels the additional features of eyefinity, DX11 and lower idle power use are more important to gamers than raw performance and thusly justify the huge price premium. And that's a disconnect with the desires of some gamers (like yours truly).

I expect the coming NV products to be even worse. The GPGPU value add of their next generation is worth roughly 0 to me, but I expect it'll carry a very hefty premium over even the painfully expensive G200b cards.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think HD5000/Fermi will be remembered as mainly feature innovators, rather than performance innovators simply because a lot of games are still using older engines (Unreal Engine 3/3.5). Considering that nothing has topped Crysis in the last 2.5 years, even last generation cards and 5770 play the majority of 2009/2010 games up to 1920x1200 (i.e., Dragon Age).

Mass Effect 2: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/mass-effect-2_5.html#sect0

BioShock 2: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6251034/p-4.html

Other than STALKER: Call of Pripyat and soon to be released Battlefield Bad Company 2, I don't see the need to drop $400 on this gen just yet.

 

[crisium]

Too bad it's not at the 4890 performance level we anticipated. It really should be called a 5790. Since the 5770 is a a bit slower than the 4870 and the 5830 is a bit slower than the 4890.

 

[yh125d]

AMD, I am disappoint.

My sentiments exactly

 

[judasmachine]

anyone think it will slide to a price point more adequate for it's shortcomings?

 

[GaiaHunter]

anyone think it will slide to a price point more adequate for it's shortcomings?

Without pressure from new NVIDIA products, no.

This card performance is very disappointing considering the hardware specs (here hoping there is some problem preventing this card of at least being on par with a 4890) and the price/performance is terrible.

 

[TJ Tom]

Is everyone really THAT disappointed with the HD58xx series? I upgraded my HD4850 to a HD5850 and it's the best upgrade I ever made. Why is everyone so depressed?

HD5850 is not overpriced nor underperforming in my opinion. It's over double the performance of a HD4850 but costs "only" 60% more than a HD4850 at launch. I've seen way worse in the graphics world.

 

[SunnyD]

Is everyone really THAT disappointed with the HD58xx series? I upgraded my HD4850 to a HD5850 and it's the best upgrade I ever made. Why is everyone so depressed?

HD5850 is not overpriced nor underperforming in my opinion. It's over double the performance of a HD4850 but costs "only" 60% more than a HD4850 at launch. I've seen way worse in the graphics world.

Disappointed with the 5800's? No. Disappointed that they're slotting a card that performs worse than their top end previous generation card with a price point some 60% more in price than the previous generation card? Yeah.

The problem is given the specs of the 5830... it should run faster than a 4890, especially given the price premium.

 

[MrK6]

Wow, totally forgot that the 5830 was coming out today. Excellent review and discussion here. I don't think the 5830 is that desirable considering how close in price it is to the 5850; I think $200 would be a more appropriate price. But hey, this is what happens when there's no competition in the market. I bet AMD would love to raise the prices on the 5850 and 5870 even more than the $20 they originally did, but there would be too much of a backlash.

As far as the performance of the cards are concerned, I think the ROP reduction really hurts the card, much more so than Anand discussed in his conclusion. It seems like the lack of ROP's forces it closer to 5770 performance the higher resolution/IQ goes. If not, what (else?) does, considering the clock differences and that they have the same memory bandwidth? I like the small design of the XFX 5830, it'd be great for a SFF/gaming HTPC, but then one has to consider the fact that it uses 60%+ more power than the 5770 for a minor performance bump.

I agree that the 5870 Eyefinity 6 is way ahead of its time - we need more quality DP/mini-DP monitors before this card has a strong place in the market. And the 228W is insane, I guess that shows how much power GDDR5 consumes.

Finally, just to note, I think Xbit's review is f***ed. That's the only review I've ever seen where it shows a GTX275 competing with a 5850 in most games. That does not make sense at all.

 

[smackababy]

I am firmly against this card. Simply because it almost assures me I won't be able to find another 5850 for $250... I was really hoping to not have to fork over an extra $50 because AMD has no competition yet.

 

[Allio]

Don't regret my 5770 purchase in the slightest.

 

[blanketyblank]

The problem here is everyone is comparing it to the 4890 at its CURRENT price.
This is being launched at the 4890s launch price so from AMD's perspective it seems reasonable. Who knows how long the current 4890s will last as AMD EOLs them. Without the 4xxx series in the picture at all these do become more reasonable as you have to start comparing them to the GTX 275 which is over $240. 5770 gets compared to GTX 260. 5750 to GTS 250, etc...

I wish nvidia would start lowering prices on its old cards now that Fermi is almost out. Hopefully that would change things.

 

[Zap]

At least the Eyefinity lovers who have never experienced the GSOD over at the H love the 5830.

 

[GaiaHunter]

As far as the performance of the cards are concerned, I think the ROP reduction really hurts the card, much more so than Anand discussed in his conclusion. It seems like the lack of ROP's forces it closer to 5770 performance the higher resolution/IQ goes. If not, what (else?) does, considering the clock differences and that they have the same memory bandwidth? I like the small design of the XFX 5830, it'd be great for a SFF/gaming HTPC, but then one has to consider the fact that it uses 60%+ more power than the 5770 for a minor performance bump.

Yeah but it has the same ROPs as the 4890 and even considering true the theory that the shaders of the 5xxx series are weaker/less efficient compared to the 4xxx series, the fact is the 5830 has 320 more of those (or 64 clusters more) and the other only difference seems to be 50 MHz clock.

Its not like the 5770 that have less bandwidth compared to the 4870.

 

[Phil1977]

Well if I was AMD I would have done the same thing.

They can't use Juniper and make it any faster. 800 MHz is fast allready and it only has a 128 bit bus.

They didn't do or want to do another design either.

So the only option they had was to defeature cypress.

Now for us hardware guys that study reviews, we are disappointed.

This card / chip costs ATI pretty much the same as a 5850. ATIs strategy is to scale up and not down.

But in the end of day this card will sell on price point. So many people out there that don't study hardware sites and they just go by numbers and pick this card because it is the cheapest of the 5800 series...

Yes it's closer to the 5770 than it is to the 5830, but from what I saw on the internet most 5830s will be overclocked editions anyway...

Has anyone seen some overclocking tests?

EDIT: Found this german review...

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/...radeon_hd_5830/23/#abschnitt_uebertaktbarkeit

They basically got 10-13% more performance out of the card... Not bad and should make it more appealing.

In Crysis it managed to overtake the 4890 and GTX285...

 

[MrK6]

Yeah but it has the same ROPs as the 4890 and even considering true the theory that the shaders of the 5xxx series are weaker/less efficient compared to the 4xxx series, the fact is the 5830 has 320 more of those (or 64 clusters more) and the other only difference seems to be 50 MHz clock.
Its not like the 5770 that have less bandwidth compared to the 4870.

And yet it's still much slower than the 4890. The 4xxx series might not have been as dependent on/needed as many ROPs as does the 5xxx series to maintain performance. Something is limiting the architecture, I'm just hypothesizing what it is. One would have to test a 5770 with more ROPs or a 5830 with the same ROPs as the 5850 in order to determine if it's a limiting factor.

All in all, the card is just a sink for bad Cypress cores. It'd be a shame if they artificially crippled it by disabling ROPs, but who knows. In the end, the 4830 this ain't.

 

[GaiaHunter]

And yet it's still much slower than the 4890. The 4xxx series might not have been as dependent on/needed as many ROPs as does the 5xxx series to maintain performance. Something is limiting the architecture, I'm just hypothesizing what it is. One would have to test a 5770 with more ROPs or a 5830 with the same ROPs as the 5850 in order to determine if it's a limiting factor.

All in all, the card is just a sink for bad Cypress cores. It'd be a shame if they artificially crippled it by disabling ROPs, but who knows. In the end, the 4830 this ain't.

Yeah the options are: it is a bottleneck somewhere in the architecture or is some other problem.

As it is this card is a bad buy.

 

[alexruiz]

Am I the only one thinking that Anand's review is one of the worst for this card?

Instead of using catalyst 10.2, he is still using 9.9 for some of the Ati cards!!!
On the other hand, using catalyst 10.2 would have shown a stronger 5770, painting the 5830 even worse

 

[soccerballtux]

Am I the only one thinking that Anand's review is one of the worst for this card?

Instead of using catalyst 10.2, he is still using 9.9 for some of the Ati cards!!!
On the other hand, using catalyst 10.2 would have shown a stronger 5770, painting the 5830 even worse

hm he _should_ be using 10.2 That is odd. good catch.

 

[Voo]

Instead of using catalyst 10.2, he is still using 9.9 for some of the Ati cards!!!

No he's not - already came up in the comments.

And I usually like the [H]OCP but not comparing the card against a 4870/90 and then talking about the great performance is rather.. odd. I mean we all knew that the performance of a 5830 would be somewhere between a 5770 and a 5850 - where should be the surprise in that? It's much more interesting to compare it to other architectures. I mean if the 5830 gets gold, what would the 4890 get.. platinum?
All that "but the card has Eyefinity, DX11, Bitstreaming Audio,.." sounds much like Nvidia marketing talk - just replace it with Physix and Cuda. That's not what I'd call progress. I can understand the price for a 5850/70 (high but no real competition), but for this card that's a bit of a stretch

The only thing that saves this card at that point is, that it's rather hard to get 4890s for a reasonable price anymore and there's no Nvidia competition..

 

[toyota]

people wanted a 5830 because the 5770 could not beat the 4890. unfortunately the 5830 cant either which is a joke based on its specs and price

 

[Zap]

And I usually like the [H]OCP but not comparing the card against a 4870/90 and then talking about the great performance is rather.. odd.

I usually like HardOCP too, but they've been on a total ATI lovefest over there lately. I mean, sure the Radeon 5xxx series are pretty nice products, but first they have an article that basically states "we at H all use these cards and have never encountered the GSOD" implying that it isn't much of a problem and now this article painting the 5830 in the best possible way.

 

[Phil1977]

Anyone remember the Radeon 9600 non pro?

I believe it was the 9700 chip with 128 memory bus and unlocked pipes. It cost ATI the same as selling a 9700 and you could even unlock the pipes on many cards...

And didn't they follow up with a new 9600 non pro, which was a new chip and much slower...

Also to me power usage was a big factor in getting the 5750. I also wanted the latest generation because I know that's where the driver focus will be. And my card is inaudible.

EyeFinity and Bitsreaming however have no value to me at this point of time.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Anyone remember the Radeon 9600 non pro?

I believe it was the 9700 chip with 128 memory bus and unlocked pipes. It cost ATI the same as selling a 9700 and you could even unlock the pipes on many cards...

And didn't they follow up with a new 9600 non pro, which was a new chip and much slower...

Also to me power usage was a big factor in getting the 5750. I also wanted the latest generation because I know that's where the driver focus will be. And my card is inaudible.

EyeFinity and Bitsreaming however have no value to me at this point of time.

I belive the 9500 Pro's were the popular unlocking card. Maybe the 9600 non Pro had some unlocking capability too? I don't know... I just remember when the 9600XT came out how amazed I was at a 500MHz GPU.

 

[Qbah]

Anyone remember the Radeon 9600 non pro?

I believe it was the 9700 chip with 128 memory bus and unlocked pipes. It cost ATI the same as selling a 9700 and you could even unlock the pipes on many cards...

And didn't they follow up with a new 9600 non pro, which was a new chip and much slower...

Also to me power usage was a big factor in getting the 5750. I also wanted the latest generation because I know that's where the driver focus will be. And my card is inaudible.

EyeFinity and Bitsreaming however have no value to me at this point of time.

That was a 9500Pro - 8:1 and 128bit bus. There was also a 9500NP with 4:1 and 256bit bus (the "L" shaped memory ones could be unlocked to a 9700). The 9600 cards were a complete new chip - 4:1 and 128bit and were the midrange parts during the 9800Pro/XT days. The 9700Pro/NP differed only in clocks - both 8:1 with 256bit bus.

Ahh the good ol' days...