"What?" you're asking. "There's another Radeon HD 5000-series card hiding under ATI's cap? That's right. In fact, there's more than one: the Radeon HD 5830 we're testing here today and a Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity⁶ Edition board that'll surface in March. But we'll be looking at the six-display-capable model later. Today, with the GF100-based cards from Nvidia still missing in action, it's all about the Radeon HD 5830, purported to hit a price and performance point between the Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5850.
At this point, we should probably just refer to February 2010 as "Radeon 5000-Series Launch Month," because this is the third card to emerge in the last 28 days. It's also the most exciting of the trio. Nevertheless, if you missed the Radeon HD 5450 and Radeon HD 5570 stories, those are more entry-level discrete boards. This launch is aimed toward the folks with a little more money to spend on graphics, but not the $300+ it'd take to procure the company's higher-end offerings.
You see, before today, there was a big hole between the $160 Radeon HD 5770 and the $310 Radeon HD 5850. That's a gaping $150 price gap that fails to capitalize on the facts the ATI's previous generation fell off after the Radeon HD 4890 and Nvidia is only able to compete sub-$200 with GeForce GTX 260 or above $350 with the 285. The GeForce GTX 275 is essentially missing in action.
In its prime, the Radeon HD 4890 stood in for roughly $200, but good luck finding find one for sale anymore. The Radeon HD 4890 stock seems to have dried up over the last month.

Apparently, nature isn't the only thing that abhors a vacuum. AMD isn't too happy about it either, so it gave us the Radeon HD 5830 to fill the void. It emerges with a $239 launch price; promising, but certainly not set in stone, as the Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 showed us. Since the new 5830 is based on the high-end Cypress GPU that powers both of its higher-end predecessors, we have ambitious hopes for this card. In 1670, John Ray said, "Hell is paved with good intentions." So, let's make sure that this seemingly perfectly-placed product delivers the bang for your buck we'd expect.
- Radeon HD 5830: Bridging The Gap
- The Radeon HD 5830 Architecture
- Radeon HD 5830: The Reference Card
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark Vantage And Crysis
- Benchmark Results: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Benchmark Results: Resident Evil 5
- Benchmark Results: World In Conflict: Soviet Assault
- Benchmark Results: Fallout 3
- Benchmark Results: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 2 And DirectX 11
- Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead And AA/AF
- Power, Temperature, And Noise Benchmarks
- Conclusion
man ati is kicking Nvidia in every corner right now, all the way from low end to the high end 5970!
What? The amount of stupid in this post is astounding.
man ati is kicking Nvidia in every corner right now, all the way from low end to the high end 5970!
man ati is kicking Nvidia in every corner right now, all the way from low end to the high end 5970!
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.
A gtx260 beats it in places and its only 10% faster than a 5770, thats 70 dollars cheaper ? Thanks , but NO Thanks.
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.
As for unlocking it, its probably possible, but the results would be unpredictable.
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 .
notty, you are total nvidia a**hole. Stop trolling to every ATI related articles already. Thanks.
ATi, just let me use two damned 5770's at once for my third display,. or allow us to use a damned passive adaptor!
Screw the 5830.
The 5870 x6 should come with 6 miniDP to DVI adaptors, for free (an adaptor worth $5 or whatever, but stores like to sell them for $50).
Two issues, AVP is so buggy many people are forced to run it on DX9 (myself included, DX11 load), and it doesn't play nicely with x64 OS's.
You should wait til they come out with a major patch first...