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
BattleForge
BattleForge is a game we have always taken as being shader-heavy, which is what makes our results here so interesting. While Far Cry 2 was a dead heat between the 5830/4890/GTX275, BattleForge quickly separates the cards. We’re anywhere between 15-20% slower than those cards, leaving the 5830 to hang with the 4870 most of the time, and to even lose there at 1680. Meanwhile against the 5850, it’s 25-30% slower.
Given that the 5830 has a higher ratio of shader power to rendering than any of these other cards, our best conclusion is that BattleForge is in fact a ROP-heavy game when not completely starved of shader power. The result is that the 5830 is placing near a card that costs some 33% less. It’s clear that the impact of cutting the ROPs in half will vary from game to game.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
We redo our test suite roughly every 6 months. We'll be redoing it in time for GF100, but this uses the same suite we had for the 5870 launch. In the mean time benchmarking DX11 games doesn't really tell us a whole lot when the results are going to be perfectly in lockstep with the performance differences of the 5000 series cards.gumdrops - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
The Fermi cards that are coming out in April aren't exactly competing in the same price point as this one and it'll be months more before NVIDIA even announces mainstream Fermi derivants.It would be nice to know if this card is closer to a 5850 in DX11 performance than a 5770.
Calin - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
Yes, it would be nice to know.However, a new test methodology would invalidate the earlier results - unlike now, when you have a graph with 20 cards, you'll have a graph with two cards (that's it, until the old cards are retested, which will take quite a bit of time).
ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
But Fermi being in another price range might not prevent Anandtech from testing the lower end cards again. They did test the 3870 in the 5x00 reviews, which I thought was a nice touch.HotFoot - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
It really was nice to see a 3870 in the graphs. I don't upgrade my video card every generation, and in fact this round went from a 3870 to a 5870. I hope in a couple years' time I'll be able to see the odd 5870 performance comparison to some 7xxx-generation (or nvidia equivalent).sc3252 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I can't say I am surprised, the 5770 was a huge let down, and the 5450 wasn't much better. Really I was thinking the same thing looking at every graph, way to much. It shouldn't even be priced at $200 more like $189. You should have just given them a big fat F at the end of the review.As a 5850 owner I really do think a lot of the Directx 11 effects really don't go well with the cards, the cards take to much of a hit to enable the effects a lot of the time and makes me feel like I am gaming on a umm 5800 fx series card.
smokedturkey - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
This is the reason I am still using a Radeon X1900 Crossfire Edition i picked up on Ebay for $65 to play Oblivion at 1650x1080 high settings. hahaha I wonder where the performance vs. price has really come into play these last few years?ev1l - Friday, July 9, 2010 - link
I want to buy a new video card and i can not...I have a old 8800gts512 and i still dont have any reason to change it....
I saw less than 100w for all my system, silence and fresh
i ply crysis, i ply dirt, i ply stalker, left4dead2 etc.... more 5 or 10fps for 300$
I want some real progress pls