Final thoughts and rating
We had high hopes for AMD's last major entrant to the Radeon 5-series ranks. Engineered to fill the gap between the HD 5770 and HD 5850 parts - spanning £100 - the Radeon HD 5830 accomplishes the task...kind of.Evaluated at a resolution of 1,920x1,200, performance of the card is just over 10 per cent higher than the HD 5770's, but the Radeon HD 5850 is 25 per cent faster still. Going by nomenclature, then, it's more akin to a '5790' than a '5830', according to our benchmark findings.
The underwhelming performance of HD 5830 could have been mitigated if factors such as price and energy efficiency were sharp. However, based on a Radeon HD 5850 PCB, power credentials are practically identical to its bigger brother, and the use of a custom cooler and large-die GPU also means that Radeon HD 5830 won't be cheap: our latest pricing indicates an etail price of least £190.
Ultimately, AMD's design choices for Radeon HD 5830 - large PCB, 2.15bn-transistor GPU, 16 ROPs - means that it will be hard to recommend, because performance falls way short of the HD 5850: a proper 5800-series GPU. We're also perplexed as to what AMD's partners can do to reduce package pricing to £150, which is where it would make sense.
There is some good news; based on our overclocking results, we're bound to see pre-overclocked HD 5830s that help close the performance gap to HD 5850, but the question will remain of keeping etail pricing in check.
Bottom line: the Radeon HD 5830's architecture choices and physical manifestation means that its value (at over £200) doesn't match up with the performance. You'd be better advised going for £116 HD 5770 or, assuming cash is available, picking up a cheap-ish HD 5850, if you can find one in-stock.
Focusing on the review card, Sapphire's Radeon HD 5830 1,024MB represents the best job it could have done with the GPU provided by AMD. The cooler's good, overclocking is great, and CoD: MW2 is an excellent addition. But priced at over £200* we feel that Sapphire needs to knock on AMD's door and ask for a healthy rebate on each card.
* Update 25/02/10: the etail price of the HD 5830 cards is higher than even our predictions. Average pricing hovers around £210 and stock is limited.
The good
Sapphire's cooler is very good
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is an excellent bundled game; brings card cost down to £180.
Significant overclocking potential
The not so good
Priced way too high to be competitive (as an architecture)
The architecture is rather lopsided for a HD 5800-series card
Power-draw credentials no better than the much-faster HD 5850
HEXUS Rating
Sapphire's card scores higher than the 'reference architecture' design due to the aforementioned positives of a decent cooler, overclocking potential, and CoD: MW2.
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 1,024MB graphics card can be ordered from the following retailers:
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HEXUS Right2Reply
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