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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Paladin1211 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
No, the 4890 is a revised version of the 4870 with slight changes in architecture design. It's not an overclocked 4870 as you may think :)Lurker911 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
What architectural change? Point me to the source of this info. So far from what I read, there are no changes to the rendering architecture. the chip design is a little improved to reduce leakage and allow higher clocks speeds.Lurker911 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
From anandtech's own article: 4890 vs gtx275"The Radeon HD 4890 is the designated successor of the HD 4870 and now AMD's fastest single GPU graphics card. This isn't reached with fundamental changes but with increased clock speeds."
silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
..and it'd be nice if AMD did the same with their CPUs ;)silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I wish AMD would release tweaked versions of its Phenom II CPUs like ATi do with their graphics... :)arnavvdesai - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I think you mean its >400$Kibbles - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
With the paper launch and not so good pricing, I'm thinking AMD doesn't really want this to be a good selling product. Just decent enough so they can sell off the defective chips. They're probably stocking up even after this launch anticipating a better yield from TSMC later this year. All the while selling it for a sellable price.Also on page 2
"The 5850E6 is the 6 port mini-DisplayPort card that AMD was using to drive their 6 monitor and 24 monitor setups during the event."
I think you meant 5870E6.
Xtrafresh - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I'm really intrigued by that XFX design, and how short it is. That could actually be a very nice card to be built into portable LAN-rigs or cases that simply dont have a gazilion feet of space to place cards.Is it possible to ask XFX these questions:
1) hoe long exactly is this card going to be?
2) is it going to have the same MSRP as other 5830s, or can that price be undercus because of smaller PCBs and less components needed?
3) did they make any compromises in terms of memory or power delevery circuitry to get to this small size?
I'm intrigued...
Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
To be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to the vendor pictures (and I should have). I'm going to ask XFX about that; that really looks like a Photoshop session gone mad.Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
And just to reply to myself while waiting on a response from XFX, I found a picture of their 5750. It's identical to the 5830.http://www.xfxforce.com/ecms.ashx/85995634-6395-4e...">http://www.xfxforce.com/ecms.ashx/85995...rdModels...