Radeon HD 5830 Performance Preview

Posted 02/25/2010 at 9:02am | by Loyd Case

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The number of ROPs are half that of the 5850, which will likely affect AA performance. Stream processors are right in line, but memory bandwidth is out of whack – on the high side – for a “middle” product. Then there’s the core clock: 800MHz. Since the 5830 uses the same Cypress GPU as the 5850 and 5870, with more functional units disabled, the clock speed had to be juiced to hit performance targets.

All those decisions come together to explain why the maximum board power is higher than the HD 5850 while performance is lower. But how much lower is the performance? Let’s find out. We ran benchmarks against a Radeon HD 5770 and HD 5850 to compare.

Performance Results

We ran the reference HD 5830 in our standard graphics testbed:
•    Intel Core i7 975@ 3.3GHz
•    Asus Rampage II Extreme X58 motherboard
•    6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 @ 1333MHz
•    Corsair TX850W 850W PSU
•    Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard drive
•    Lite-On 20x DVD+/-RW optical drive
•    Gateway FPD2485 24-inch display (1920x1200)

We’ve updated our standard benchmark suite to include a couple of DirectX 11 benchmarks. We’re now running:
•    3DMark Vantage
•    Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark
•    Crysis (DX10 mode)
•    Far Cry 2 (DX10 mode)
•    STALKER: Call of Pripiyat (DX11)
•    DiRT2 (DX11)
•    Tom Clancy’s HAWX (DX10)
•    Battle Forge (DX11)

We ran our tests at two settings: 1920x1200, max detail, AA off and 1920x1200, max detail, 4x AA. 3DMark Vantage includes the performance, high and extreme settings.

First, let’s take a look at the two synthetic benchmarks.

3DMark Vantage tells us that the HD 5830 really is close to an HD 5850. The more recent Unigine Heaven benchmark – which is based on an actual game engine – shows the HD 5830 behaves more like the lesser HD 5770. So which synthetic benchmark more accurately resembles reality? Let’s see what stories the game benchmarks have to tell.

Well, this doesn’t look good. The Radeon HD 5850 essentially crushes the 5830, more so than the $49 price differential might warrant. That’s not to say the HD 5830 is a bad card – it certainly outpaces the HD 5770. But it’s closer in performance to a 5770 than a 5850 in real game tests.

We’ll be reviewing actual shipping cards in the near future; it’s possible that benchmarks will change a bit with officially shipping drivers. Given that Radeon HD 5770s are priced around $170, the HD 5830 looks a little overpriced. This card would be a better deal at around $215-$220, and I’m guessing the price will eventually settle closer to $200. At $250, it’s much better to squeeze out a few more dollars and pick up a Radeon HD 5850 for $299.