AMD’s Radeon HD 5830: A Filler Card at the Wrong Price

Conclusion

The 5830 is a card that the public has had some very high expectations for coming in to this launch. The 4830 – as short lived as it was – was a well received card even if it wasn’t an immediate bargain. For anyone expecting a repeat performance on the 5830, we can’t help but feel that you’re going to come away disappointed.

On a global average, the 5830 sits about half-way between a 4890 and a 4870, or if you prefer is about 8% slower than a GTX 275 and 20% slower than a 5850. The latter is particularly interesting since it comes so close to the 5850 even though it only has 55% of the ROP capacity; clearly the hit to the ROPs didn’t hurt too badly.

At any rate, I had been expecting something that would consistently be to the north of the 4890 in performance, but the performance is what it is – there’s no bad card, only a poorly priced card.

And a poorly priced card is really what does the 5830 in. AMD expects this card to go for $240, a mere $20 below the original MSRP for the 5850; if one goes by the original MSRP of the 5850 this card is much too slow for the price. Conversely the 5830 is around 10% slower than the 4890, a card that was going for between $180 and $200 before supplies seemingly ran dry. The only price comparison where $240 makes sense is compared to the 5850’s current $300 price – you get 80% of the performance for 80% of the price. But the 5850 is priced for profit taking, it’s a fast card but it’s not a great deal.

When we were being briefed about this card, AMD’s (and former Beyond3D guru) Dave Baumann asked us to get back to him on what we thought the card should be priced at once we finished our testing. Our response to him, and the same thing that we’re holding to in this review, is that the sweet spot for this card would be $200, and the highest should be $220. $200 is a sweet spot because it picks up where the 4890 left off, even if it is around 10% slower. $220 on the other hand places a greater valuation on the 5000 series feature set, and is closer to the GTX 275.

Dave’s argument (and undoubtedly one that will resonate throughout AMD) is that the 5830 has some very useful advantages over the 4890 – DX/DirectCompute 11, Eyefinity, better OpenCL support, and bitstreaming audio. All of this is true, although the 5830 strikes us as a poor choice for Eyefinity usage (get something faster) or for bitstreaming audio (it’s not exactly a cool HTPC card). DX11 and OpenCL is harder to evaluate due to their newness, and in the case of OpenCL AMD doesn’t even distribute their OpenCL driver with the rest of their Catalyst driver set yet.

Meanwhile there’s a separate argument entirely over whether the 5830 is more future-proof (disregarding DX11) due to its higher shader throughput. Historically speaking this is a reasonable argument, but it’s also one that I’m not convinced will hold up when NVIDIA is going to be pushing tessellation instead of shading – you can’t ignore what NVIDIA’s doing given their clearly stronger developer relations.

Ultimately the problem is that being future proof comes at too high a price. The 5770 was a hard sale compared to the faster 4870, and this time we’re talking about what’s around a $60 premium based on performance over the 4000 series. AMD’s saving grace here is that you can no longer buy such a card – it’s either a GTX260/4870, or nothing.

At the risk of sounding petty over $20, a $240 5830 is $20 too much. If this were priced at $200-$220 it wouldn’t be a clear choice for the 5830, but it wouldn’t be such a clear choice against it. For $240 you can try to shop around for a 4890 and save $40-$60 while getting a card that will perform better at most of today’s games, or save even more by going with a 4870 that will slightly underperform the 5830. Alternatively you can save up another $60 and get the 5850, a card that is faster running and cooler running at the same time. There is no scenario where we can wholeheartedly justify a 5830 if it’s going to be a $240 card – this really should have been the new $200 wonder card.

Update: It looks like AMD's partners have been able to come through and make this a hard launch. PowerColor and Sapphire cards have started showing up at Newegg. So we're very happy to report that this didn't turn out to be a paper launch after all. Do note however that the bulk of the cards are still not expected until next week.

This brings up the other elephant in the room: today’s paper launch. Paper launches should by all means have died last year, but their ghost apparently continues to live on. If in fact no 5830s make it to retailers in time for today’s launch, then the card should not have been launched today – it’s as simple as that.