Introduction



The RADEON HD 5830 comes to fill in the gap between the best-buy 5770 and the 5850; it features dual 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors and has about the same performance as the 4890 in DirectX 10 games. The XFX model comes with a custom made heatsink that sports 5 heatpipes, meant to cool the card better than the stock solution.

I would like to thank XFX Europe for making this review possible of their RADEON HD 5830.



About XFX:

XFX dares to go where the competition would like to, but can’t. That’s because, at XFX, we don’t just create great digital video components—we build all-out, mind-blowing, performance-crushing, competition-obliterating video cards and motherboards. And, not only are they amazing, you don’t have to live on dry noodles and peanut butter to afford them.

XFX is a division of PINE Technology Holdings Limited, a leading manufacturer and marketer of innovative solutions for the worldwide gaming technologies market. Founded in 1989, PINE designs, develops, manufactures and distributes high-performance video graphics technology and computer peripherals. The company’s dedicated research and development team are continually pushing the limits to meet the demands of the ever-growing and performance-driven community. Headquartered in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong SAR), PINE has more than 1,000 employees worldwide with 16 offices around the globe. PINE also maintains four state-of-the-art research and development facilities in the Asia Pacific region and two factories in Mainland China. To learn more about PINE, please visit www.pinegroup.com.

Product Features

• 1GB GDDR5 memory
  
• ATI Eyefinity technology with support for up to three displays
  
• Windows 7 support
  
• ATI Stream technology
  
• Designed for DirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL
  
• Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
  
• Compliant with DirectX® 11 and earlier revisions
  
• Supports OpenGL 3.2
  
• 40 nm Process technology
  
• ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
  
• ATI Avivo™ HD video and display technology
  
• Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay™ technology
  
• Display Port, HDMI, 2xDL-DVI
  
• PCI Express® 2.1 support

Product Specifications

The RADEON 5830 from AMD was designed to fill in the gap between the 5770 and the 5850, having the same features of the more powerful cards.

RADEON HD 5830 does come with the Cypress LE code name, “Cypress” being the code name for the high end series of AMD’s 5*** generation.

5830 shares the same transistor number as its more powerful brothers, the 5850 and the 5870, but some chip internals are disabled from the factory; because of this, the 5830 does have 1120 shader processors, compared with the 5830 with 1440 shader processors or the 5870 with 1600 shader processors.

Here is a RADEON HD 5870 Block Diagram which shows the disabled parts on the 5830:



Some people would ask if it is possible to re-enable those missing shader processors; well, unfortunately it is not because they are laser cut. AMD has decided to disable these processors as a process of eliminating wafer errors: the portions of the chip that seemed defective in the initial factory tests were physically disconnected. In the distant past, some ATI cards that were considered to have chip defects had portions disabled with the help of the BIOS and people could re-enable them by a simple BIOS flash or with the help of Rivatuner; sometimes, enabling those parts would get you a much better board performance, but some people were unlucky, meaning that those disabled parts were indeed defective and started to get artefacts.



The latest GPUs from AMD fully support DirectX11 instructions which include GPGPU (DirectCompute 11), tessellation and improved multi-threading; they also come with Shader Model 5, better shadows and HDR texture compression.

Tesselation, as described on the Unigine website, is a “scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that developers can gain a more detailed look of their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veridical visual perception: the virtual reality is vivified at your fingertips delivering engaging gaming experience.”

Here is a modeled house inside the Unigine Heaven benchmark, without and with the tessellation feature enabled:

The multi-threaded rendering is similar to the techniques applied for the current CPUs. If a shader or an instruction has to be queued up, the process creates a delay. The current GPUs can now process data completely threaded, which bring a better overall performance.

The DirectCompute feature allows access to the GPU for stream computing; it shares a range of computational interfaces with its competitors: OpenCL and CUDA.

Eyefinity is an advanced multiple-display technology from AMD which enables a single GPU to support up to six independent display outputs simultaneously. The six high-resolution displays can be operated simultaneously and independently, configured in various combinations of landscape and portrait orientations.

We can group multiple monitors into a large integrated display surface, enabling windowed and full screen 3D applications, images and video to span across multiple displays as one desktop workspace. ATI Eyefinity supports Duplicated Mode operation (PC desktop cloned on multiple displays) and Extended Mode (PC desktop extended across multiple displays).

Packaging:

Like the XFX 5770, the 5830 external box is looking awesome, with the board name in the center, the XFX logo on the top left and some icons that symbolize some of the board features:



Also on the top part of the box, we can see the Aliens vs Predator logo, telling us that we do have a full game voucher inside the box and the ATI Eyefinity logo:



On one of the box sides, we can find a white sticker with the product model number, the part number and some serial numbers; to the right, there are some more stickers that tell us additional information regarding the bundled game:



Also on the box, we can find the product system requirements and what we can find inside:



On the opposite side, we some product features are written:



Finally, on the back of the box, we can find the product key features, a larger product description and some information regarding the 5 Star Support from XFX:



The box is sealed on both sides, to prevent unauthorized people messing with the box contents:



Inside the external box, we can find another cardboard enclosure, with the XFX logo and website address on top:



On the box laterals, we can find a larger XFX logo:



The inside of the enclosure has two layers, with the bundle located on the top layer:

Inside the box

Here is what we can find inside:

• a Quick Installation Guide
  
• two 6-pin to 4-pin power adapters
  
• a CrossFire Bridge
  
• a DVI to VGA adapter
  
• a XFX Serial Number Door Hanger
  
• the AvP Digital Download Coupon
  
• a Driver Cd with Installation Guide
  
• an Installation Guide

The XFX Serial Number Door Hanger contains the information needed to register the XFX video card on the website and gain additional support; here we do also have a space reserved to write our allocated user name/password, after the registration is complete:



The Driver Installation CD does come with the necessary drivers, but also a Multilanguage User guide:



The Quick Installation Guide tells us how to proceed, step by step, from the computer preparation to fit in the video card to the driver installation:



The Installation Guide is a more in-depth version of the Quick Installation Guide:



The DVI to VGA adapter is provided for people that do have older CRT or TFT-LCD monitors, that lack a DVI interface:



The CrossFire Bridge helps us build a CrossFireX configuration, with another video card and can be found inside a protective transparent plastic enclosure:



The AvP Digital Download Coupon provides us enough information to get from the internet the full version of the game and start playing:



On the bottom layer, we can find the video card, wrapped in an anti-static bag:



After the removal of the video card from the cardboard frame, we can find another XFX logo:

A Closer Look

On the top part of the video card we can find the same cool artwork as on the external package; the cooling solution is not stock, but a 5 heatpipe one, with the fan in the center:



The cooling solution looks very similar to the one we can find on the XFX RADEON HD 5870 Black Edition:



The red line going from the left to the right of the card top plastic part is a design element taken from the OEM cards:



On the back, we can find two red plastic frames; through one we can find the PWM fan connector and in the right one there are 2 6-pin power headers:



On one of the board laterals, we can see some more ventilation holes and the ATI Radeon logo in center:



On the bottom part, we can see the matte black PCB, the screws that are used to fix the top part, the VRM heatsink and the frame, which is used to distribute the forces evenly in the GPU area:



Also on the bottom, there is a sticker with the boards’ serial number, the code name, the board version and some more useful information that would help the manufacturer if the card comes back because of a RMA:



We do have 2 CrossFire headers on the board, and this tells us that we can install a maximum of 4 cards in a single computer:



The top part of the card is covered by a transparent protective film, which XFX advises us to remove it before the first use (to avoid it sticking permanently on the surface, because of the raised temperatures during load):



The central red fan does have the XFX logo in the center, on a black background:



On the metal plate, we can see a DisplayPort and a HDMI connector, along with a pair of DVI connectors:

Test Setup

Stefan's Test Setup
CPU	Core i7 920 @ 3.2Ghz
Cooling	Cogage True Spirit
Mainboard	Asrock X58 Extreme
Memory	G.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBPI PI Series
VGA	AXLE GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 Gainward Geforce GTS 250 Deep Green Gainward Geforce GT240 Inno3D Geforce GT240 Sparkle Geforce GTS 250 LP ATI Radeon HD 4550 ATI Radeon HD 4890 ATI Radeon HD 5770 ATI Radeon HD 5830
Other	Power Supply : Antec True Power New 750W HDD : Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10

After plugging the card into the proper PCI-Express slot, I have tried to install the 10.4 drivers;I did not get any error message, but besides of the usual utilities, the driver did not install and in Device Manager, the card was recognized as "Standard VGA Adapter". After searching for some minutes the issue on the Internet, it seems that AMD forgot to include driver support for the 5830 in the 10.4 release; my options were to install the ATI Catalyst 10.2, Catalyst 10.3 or the Catalyst 10.4a Hotfix, which has added support for the 5830 video card. In the end, I went for the third option.

With the help of the GPU-Z 0.4.3 utility, we can extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:



I have used the Everest Ultimate Edition utility to find out the ATI PowerPlay pre-defined clocks and some more information regarding the GPU Code name, Part Number or BIOS Version:



With the same utility, we can find in-depth information regarding the GPGPU capabilities:



To find out the IDLE and maximum temperatures, I have used the Furmark utility, with the Stability Test in “Xtreme Burning mode” and let it run for about 15 minutes. To record the temperatures, the GPU-Z utility was used, thanks to its Sensors monitoring tab. The recorded room temperature at the time of testing was 24.5 degrees Celsius:

IDLE



Full Load



In the tests, while the IDLE temperatures were perfect, in Full Load they seemed a little high, with the fan on AUTO mode. I would recommend setting the fan speed manually to gain lower Full Load temperatures.

Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark 2001



In 3DMark 2001, the RADEON HD 5830 succeeded to surpass all other previously tested video cards.

3DMark 2003



In 3DMark 2003, the 5830 remained at all times between the 5770 and 4890 in terms of performance.

3DMark 2005



In the 3DMark 2005 benchmark, the same thing happened as with the previous tests, but it seems that it is closer more to the 5770 than the 4890.

3DMark 2006



In 3DMark 2006, the 5830 impressed with the performance and it was really close to the RADEON HD 4890 scores.

3DMark Vantage



In 3DMark Vantage, the 5830 was the king and in consequence, it succeeded to surpass all the previously tested video cards.

*The Vantage scores were calculated by summing up the GPU and CPU subscores

Here are the Vantage subscores separately:

Subscore



Unigine Heaven



In Unigine Heaven, DirectX10, the 5830 surpassed the 4890 in tests without anti-aliasing, but with filtering enabled, it came really close and it was even beaten at higher resolutions by the 4890.

Games Benchmarks

World in Conflict



In World in Conflict, the 5830 succeeded to surpass the 5770 without problems at all resolutions but it did not beat the ex-flagship, RADEON HD 4890.

Devil May Cry 4



Devil May Cry 4 was an easy task for the 5830 and it displayed the most FPS in the tests compared to all previous cards.

Street Fighter 4



In Street Fighter 4, the 5830 was head-to-head with the 4890 and the difference seemed to shrink when reaching the highest resolution.

Crysis



In Crysis, the 5830 made a difference and displayed the highest FPS in all tests; however, the game was not really playable at the Very High setting, with AA enabled.

Left 4 Dead 1



Left 4 Dead 1 seemed no challenge for the 5830, the least FPS number displayed being 94.13, at the highest resolution with AA enabled.

Unreal Tournament 3



Unreal Tournament 3 is a game where the older RADEON 4890 won by a big margin, compared with all the previously tested video cards.

H.A.W.X.



In H.A.W.X, the 5830 performed very good, but it still did not succeed to beat the older flagship, RADEON HD 4890.

Resident Evil 5



In Resident Evil 5, we can see playable FPS at all resolutions, but it got beaten again by the 4890. With AA enabled, the FPS difference seems even a little higher.

Stalker: Call of Pripyat



In Call of Pripyat, the 5830 went again head-to-head with the 4890; some tests were won by the 4890 and some by the 5830. The 5770 was left behind at all times.

Call of Juarez



In Call of Juarez, the 5830 won most of the tests, at the lower resolutions; when the resolution got higher, the FPS difference got really low and it performed almost the same as the 4890.

Far Cry 2



Far Cry 2 is another win for the 4890; only at 1280x1024 with no AA, 5830 manages to take the lead.

DirectX11 Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven V1 DX11[tesselation]



In Unigine V1, DirectX11 mode, with Tesselation enabled, 5830 managed to win in all cases, but the performance difference was very low.

Unigine Heaven V2 DX11[normal tesselation]



In the second version of the Unigine Heaven benchmark, with Tesselation enabled, 5830 won again, but the performance difference got less and less as we were climbing on the resolution ladder, with or without AA.

Stalker: Call of Pripyat DX11 Tesselation



In Call of Pripyat DirectX11, with Tesselation enabled, both cards struggled to display high FPS count.

Colin McRae Dirt 2 DX11



In Colin McRae Dirt 2 DirectX11 benchmark, with all settings on High, both cards displayed over 40 FPS at all resolutions, with or without AA. The performance difference is, though, very little.

Conclusive Thoughts

The 5830 is positioned well in terms of performance between the 5770 and 5850, having DirectX 10 performance almost the same as the 4890 (with the 900MHz clock on the core). Considering that the 5830 has some chip internals disabled, most of us would have expected the card to consume less power than the 5850; it is not the case though, because the core speed has been raised from 725 to 800MHz.



The cooling system that came with the video card is efficient enough, the fan is silent, but it needs to be manually adjusted to get optimal temperatures in full load, if we run intensive stress applications, like Furmark with "Xtreme Burning Mode" activated; for regular games, the Auto setting should suffice.

The bundle we do get with this XFX video card is more than enough in terms of connectivity, and we also get a free full DirectX11 compatible game, Aliens vs Predator.

The only issue with the card and basically with all 5830 video cards is the pricing, which is a little high compared to the much cheaper 5770, that offers a better good price/performance ratio.



I would like to thank again to XFX for making this review possible!