VR-Zone

Fresh from leaking AMD's official presentation slides, IT168 is back with a full scale review of the Radeon HD 5830. Performance shows the HD 5830 taking a major hit from the HD 5850 - approximately 25% on average. This is about where we would expect, given the HD 5830 has a full 320 shaders less than the HD 5850 and half the ROPs (16).

The HD 5830 is also pitted against the now EOL'd Geforce GTX 260 and GTX 275. The HD 5830 edges the GTX 275 in most benchmarks.

Comparisons to the HD 4890 or the HD 5770 are missing, however. Given the results against the GTX 275, we can expect the HD 5830 come out triumphant against the HD 4890 - a card it is directly replacing. If there were a comparison with the GTX 285, we would expect the HD 5830 to end up nearly equal to it, in terms of performance.

The price is yet unknown, though the odds on favourite is $239. At this price, the HD 5830 will end up quite a bit cheaper than the HD 5850, and offer a pretty decent price/performance value. If you are on a budget, but need a more powerful card than the HD 5770, the HD 5830 will make a fine investment.

The HD 5830 makes for a fine overclocker - but it could be an isolated case here. Also, the power consumption anomaly, hinted at in the presentation, remains. Despite being heavily crippled from the HD 5850, load power remains higher. It is well below the GTX 275, however.

Interestingly, the HD 5830 is powerful enough to play almost every game with all details turned up at 1920x1200 (except Crysis).

Reference: IT168