AMD’s Radeon HD 5830: A Filler Card at the Wrong Price

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• pierrebai - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  This is ridiculous and a poor service. The old drivers are more in tune with older cards. If I buy a new card, I would install the newer drivers do I that's what I want to see compared.
  
  It makes me doubt the honesty of the review: it makes you look like you wre pissed by the paper launch and chose to use old drivers to make the card look bad.
  
  Did you use 5-months-old drivers for nvidia cards too?

• leexgx - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  did they even have the older cards i would if guessed that 9.9 for the 4890 was due to them not having the cards

• Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  No, we have them. We do a rolling benchmark suite; if you've pay attention to our charts we do what amounts to adding new cards to existing charts, as it's impractical to rebench every card with every driver change. We do rebench cards if we find that the drivers change performance significantly, but that's actually rarely the case.
  
  Otherwise everything gets refreshed at the 6 month mark. So that's why the 9.9s go with the 4000 series cards, because that's when this data was originally compiled.

• Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  I believe what Ryan is saying is that he *did* use the latest drivers with the 5830. I don't believe the older drivers will even install on the card. The older drivers were just used on the 4xxx series cards, not the 5830.
  
  Take care,
  Anand

• Drazick - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  It seems that if you used the latest drivers you would have found that its performances are equal to the HD4890.

• Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  We did. We used the review drivers AMD sent us, version 8.703RC2.

• Drazick - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  According to what you wrote you used 9.9 for all ATI's Cards.
  
  So I don't get it, did you use 10.2 for the HD5XXX?

• ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  While this is a good review, I'd suggest that people who're looking to buy a card check out other reviews of it, too. I was just reading the TechSpot one, and it looks like if you're a CoD 6 fan (and it's been a best selling game), then the 5830 beats the 4890 by a long run and is close to the 5850. So while it's not as well rounded as the 5850, the 5830 might still have its place. (Though I agree I'd love to see all these prices come down.)

• ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  BTW, two other games where it beat the 4890 well in that review were Wolfenstein and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat. In the latter the 5830 is about twice as fast as the 4890 and quite close to the 5850.

• bill4 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

  Stop crying, over what is barely a paper launch at all. It seems you yourself aren't even sure that cards wont hit etail today. And my memory is fuzzy, but havent several recent AMD and Nvidia launches in the past year been "paper"? The difference is recently it's by a week or two instead of a month plus as in the past.
  
  If you dont like it so much, put your money where your mouth is and refuse to review the card until it's available. I'm betting plenty of your competitors will always be more than willing to review any "paper launch", so the only one losing would be you, as it should be.
  
  On to the card..I agree with your view there. I have a 4890, had I been in the market for a $200-ish card today, 5830 might have been a good choice. But I would take it even farther than you and say the card doesn't really become compelling until maybe as low as $170. Especially given it's major ROP crippling would just leave me uneasy about it's performance in future games. This leaves 5850 as still the only real "budget" choice imo. Save up 300 or dont bother. Heck I think even a 5770 is a better deal than this.
  
  I suppose, if you are in the market for a Dx11 card and have $240 and not a penny more, you now have a faster choice. Dubious honor, though.