Power, Temperature, And Noise Benchmarks
There are a few surprises in the power usage tests. The new Radeon HD 5830 does use a few more watts than the Radeon HD 5850 at idle, likely due to the Radeon HD 5870 PCB on which our reference card is built. But, under load, the new card doesn't seem to be as stressed.
This is the opposite result that we expected after looking at AMD's specifications, which suggest the 5830 uses less power at idle and more under load. We're also surprised to see the Radeon HD 4890 drawing less power than the GeForce GTX 260 sample we have on-hand. The Asus ENGTX260 Matrix is a non-reference card, so we're not sure if optimization on Asus' end has anything to do with the result. However, we expected the Radeon HD 4890 to pull more watts than its competition.
Notice how little power the Radeon HD 5770 uses in comparison, an impressive result for a card that performs relatively closely to the new Radeon HD 5830.
All of these temperatures are well within reasonable limits. It is notable that the new Radeon HD 5830 produces much less heat than the other cards, despite the fact that it is saddled with a reference cooler. Then again, it makes sense when you consider that this reference cooler was designed to keep the powerful Radeon HD 5870 cool enough under load. Also note that the Asus GeForce GTX 260 is brandishing a powerful non-reference cooler and is achieving very low temperatures.
The Radeon HD 5830 generates surprisingly little noise, probably because the Radeon HD 5870 reference cooler doesn't need to spin very fast in order to keep things cool. Here, the Radeon HD 5830 offers a significant benefit compared to the notably-noisier Radeon HD 4890.
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I love my 4890. I am sad they are disappearing, because I planned on getting a x-fire thing going in the next few months, and now I have to just try and get two 5770s and sell the 4890 I have now, obviously, so I can grab some DX11! Hurray for progress!
I was hoping this would be just a bit cheaper such that the 5850 could finally come down nearer it's original MSRP. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll see those adjustments until closer to the summer.
To much money for such little card. Performance wise its just a really expensive 4890. A good buy at $200, but $240 is to much. Might as well pony up the extra $60 and get the 5850. 5810 is a bit more like it.
seems more like a 5790 than a 5830 to me... Still- they are filling in the line quite well, and its gonna be interesting to see how Nvidia's new line will compare.
im a little disappointed about this one, i mean 239 and yet the 4890 is $40 cheaper and beats it in some new games, i was really hoping for better performance form the 5830, now after reading this, im leaning towards either 5770 in crossfire or single 5850.
man ati is kicking Nvidia in every corner right now, all the way from low end to the high end 5970!
im a little disappointed about this one, i mean 239 and yet the 4890 is $40 cheaper and beats it in some new games, i was really hoping for better performance form the 5830, now after reading this, im leaning towards either 5770 in crossfire or single 5850.
man ati is kicking Nvidia in every corner right now, all the way from low end to the high end 5970!
Where is the overclocking portion? If this thing overclocks good then it might be a worthy purchase..
This article definitely made me feel better about my dual XFX 4890 CrossFire setup. Performance is theoretically around a GTX295 for less money than a single 5870!!!
if the 5830 can come down to ~$200 and offer good crossfire performance perhaps with good overclocking potential I can see this card do very well.
ATI managed to cripple all the magic out of a 5850 with this thing.
A gtx260 beats it in places and its only 10% faster than a 5770, thats 70 dollars cheaper ? Thanks , but NO Thanks.
I've been waiting for this review, thanks Don. With the 4890 and 4850X2 still floating around for sale, this one isn't appealing even at $200. Performance is just too close to the 5770...
damn it nvidia can't wait for fermi to launch!!! i'm waiting for my $300 5870. Even if nvidia releases a better card (lol) i'll be buying the 5870!
Yea I can't wait to see the results for unlocking and overclocking it. We might see the real value then.
They're backtracking but at a high price. Somehow that doesn't seem right.
hmmm...as they said: same release price as the 4890, so its all well and good...don't buy it until a few months in, and it'll bemuch cheaper, and less driver issues
What would happen if this card was flashed to a 5870's Bios I wonder? Another unlockable(maybe)product from AMD, like the dual and tripple core Phenom II's? Or was this stuff shut down because it was a faulty 5870 originally. Would be nice to unlock it and get a fully functioning 5870 for 240$. lol
Every time I read one of these reviews and then the gripe about the 5870 costing way over the MSRP price, I have a huge grin.
I got mine in early October and at $375 new. No shortage or price gouging here. One happy happy man and every review since has made me happier.
On topic:
The 5770 seems a better value than the 5830 for a cost limited gamer to me.
seeing as these are just binned defective 5870 processors, I wonder if we will ever see a video card with a socket for swapping gpus. Keep the memory during upgrades. Of course this would mean standardizing the cards to be compatible with each other, and companies would fight this to the end.
As for unlocking it, its probably possible, but the results would be unpredictable.
NO SALE. NO SALE $80.00 video card for $200 ????
Will rather get a 4890 or wait for the 5850 basic entry level laptop video card for a desktop to be $175 that it should be.
5830 is supposed to be the upgrade of the 4830 server video card and can not even use it in a server heat noise power ect. = NO SALE.
Don't care for DX11 or the junk software that runs it Win7 Vista = not gamer friendly / user friendly software.
DX11 = slow and useless / not really supported and would be maybe 5 years before there is a decent playable DX11 game if ever at the current rate of games / disasters for the PC.
OpenCL / Ati Stream would be useful if working and general user usable not geeks / science freak usable only. Load balance single threaded on a quad core or gpgpu software please = Immediate Sale of a 5970 or 4x 5850's .
ATI managed to cripple all the magic out of a 5850 with this thing.A gtx260 beats it in places and its only 10% faster than a 5770, thats 70 dollars cheaper ? Thanks , but NO Thanks.
notty, you are total nvidia a**hole. Stop trolling to every ATI related articles already. Thanks.