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.
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Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link
Only a LITTLE slower than a GTS 250? Do you work for nVidia or something? The GTS 250 is slightly better than an HD 4850 and it's only a DX10.0 card, not even a DX10.1 like the LAST generation of ATi cards. The GTS 250 gets bitch-slapped by the 4870 and 5770. The 5830 is faster than BOTH of those cards! Why don't you go read a book about the video card marketplace instead of opening your mouth and sounding like a complete moron?Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link
I meant to say a little faster.qwertymac93 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
4890 outperforms gtx285 in crysis warhead, news to me...yacoub - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
The 5770 as it should have been - with a 256-bit bus. Call me when it's $150 and I'll consider it. If the drivers improve as well.HotFoot - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
At the high-end, AMD has moved the performance benchmark a significant amount. I think the 5870 and 5850 have been very solid.But for everything else in this generation's linup, it seems that performance has taken a back-seat to features. For the lowest-end cards, that makes sense to me as probably a lot of HTPC customers are after those features. But for mid and mid-high cards in the line-up, I'm much more critical on the performance of the card than the features.
I've played only one DX11 game so far. Actually, the majority of games in my library are still DX9. It saddens me that anywhere from $120-240 buys less today than it did a year ago.
vajm1234 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
well 1st of all lemme starti was expecting a hell more from this but nope dunno whats really goin on here..why it lacks performance??
a) clock to clock performance?
b) leakage?
c)everything u can thought about......????????????????
+ i thought there will be price correction like
225 for 5850
180 for 5830 (even lower now after the differences) and so on
sometimes i feel 5850 is a dual gpu's version of 5750 with two gpu's and slight clock change inserted and connected like "two intel dual core with a hypertranspot channel for quad core" and its just optimized for performance Hell now it feels like its a corssfire issue with 5830 -- which is ACTUALLY NOT THE CASE from what we know about all this architecture.
today i went to buy a 5 series but end up buying a 4 series---
u know if u just think about it for 5 odd min u get the answer as these DX11 features are secondary @ this point than the performance .....
not only that all those features are not proper yet like that OPEN CL issue
@ATI- because of ur @**h*le profit making business we end up with an old generation cards now. FCUK off ur new gen features in price of its performances + not to forget ur NONSENSE PRICING.
Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link
You know, you're crying awfully loud and it's so damn STUPID! You want to blame someone? BLAME NVIDIA FOR NOT HAVING ANYTHING AT ALL! I mean JESUS H. CHRIST, there are nVidia cards out there that are DX TEN POINT ZERO that are STILL selling for more than the 5830 AND 5850! ATi isn't accustomed to being first out of the gate since nVidia has dominated for the last 5 video card generations. If nVidia would've gotten their act together last summer like they should have, we wouldn't be talking about this right now! Give your head a shake, if the cards aren't priced as you want and you don't want an HD 4xxx card, then DON'T BLOODY BUY ONE!!!ugh
kallogan - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
...when i saw the price and the tdp. What a disappointment.Well played, AMD.
P.S to AMD/manufacturers : I want a single-cooled gpu to fill the gap between 5670 and 5750. Or a single-slot cooled green/unplugged HD 5750 ;-). Or a single-slot cooled HD 4770.
It seems like i'll have to build one by myself ;-)
phawkins633 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
Well....so much for the paper launch thing.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
I guess now it is a moot point
Parhel - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I'd at least update the article. I mean, it's launch day and they're available for purchase. Heck, the PowerColor model is overclocked, has a custom cooler and is available at MSRP. I'm still a fan of the site, but this is a bit embarrassing.