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  • heflys - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link

    Are you kidding Anandtech? Who in their right mind would buy a 4870 over a 5770? Hell, they're pretty much even in performance, and the 5770 possesses more features.
  • kallogan - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link

    Not to mention they're so quiet and their low power consumption allow upgrades even on a weak PSU.
  • Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link

    Nope, AnandTech's last great review of something (by that I mean intelligent and unbiased) was the review of the Phenom II X4 920 and 940. I applauded AnandTech for that on other boards because AnandTech didn't drink Intel's kool-aid at the time. AnandTech didn't do the idiotic thing like other sites and compare the Phenom II X4 to the i7. No, AnandTech did the RIGHT thing and compared it to the Core 2 Quad Q8200 and Q9400 (I think those were the Q #'s). That was the day I REALLY got into reading AnandTech because all other sites were left in the dust. I also applauded AnandTech for having the balls to point out that the GTS 250 was just a rebranded 9800 GTX+ regardless of the consequences and even posted Charlie's article about it. Those were the days when AnandTech was the best review site I'd ever seen. Those days are unfortunately...over.
  • nickime - Saturday, February 27, 2010 - link

    long reader of anandtech but with this article for me you have lost all credibility, am not a fanboy, but it has become so obvious

    for once AMD is executing like a clock, it is not their fault that there is no competition (but maybe you can blame them for that as well) and they can charge premium on their products

    if they renamed and offered 4790 as 5830 might have pleased you but then it might not as it would come from wrong company

    won't be checking this site that often anymore, will try to time it with Nvidia releases, have a nice day
  • piroroadkill - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link

    Ho ho ho, I see what you did there

    Actually, I don't, this is just retarded
  • UnBiasedGuru - Friday, February 26, 2010 - link

    It seems that Anandtech takes pride in using outdated Catalyst drivers to run their tests here. It is a shame that they are too lazy to re-run the tests with newer drivers.

    It is a deception to its readers/members to use HORRIBLE drivers and attempt to use the results as an indicator of the ATI card's performance. None of you should listen to any of these results because Anandtech nor Guru3D can be trusted.

    You will see the other websites with reviews on the 5830 actually use the 8.703 and 10.3b drivers ---> All all ATI cards!!!

    Shame on you Anandtech for misleading the community and public. How much is Nvidia paying you? Your results don't match ANY of my results with the 5870. You are a bogus reviewer!
  • Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link

    Haven't you figured it out? nVidia isn't paying AnandTech. It's Intel that's behind this. AnandTech has been Intel's pet puppy for almost a year now. The idea isn't to hurt ATi for nVidia's sake but to hurt AMD for Intel's sake. Just read any Intel review and I swear that AnandTech sounds like they want to date that criminal organization the way that they coo and fawn over everything Intel does.
  • Voo - Friday, February 26, 2010 - link

    Yeah so because they used older cards for the RV770 chips which more or less don't profit from new drivers at all (didn't read anything in the release notes and didn't noticed any performance gains with my 4870), the 5830 didn't perform as well!

    That's absolutely logical! I mean the bad karma of old drivers - for other cards - just horribly disturbed the 5830 and that's why it ended up, being.. as bad as in the 3dguru review :(
  • silverblue - Friday, February 26, 2010 - link

    Send me a test rig and a 5830 and I'll give it a go ;)
  • Hrel - Friday, February 26, 2010 - link

    I wouldn't be willing to spend a pennny over 150 for this card; and I feel that's generous. The GTS250 was going for 110 for a while; and this card is only a little faster. It has DX11, which is a requirement at this point in time, and not a feature. And it is faster, but only to the amount that I'd expect this far into the future; in relation to the GTS250. In other words, it's the same class card, but for some reason it's selling for over twice as much; that's just stupid. I understand price drops got out of hand last generation; which is why I say 150. Really, excluding the 5850 and 5870 I'm really really disapointed with the performance of the 5000 series.
  • Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link

    Only a LITTLE slower than a GTS 250? Do you work for nVidia or something? The GTS 250 is slightly better than an HD 4850 and it's only a DX10.0 card, not even a DX10.1 like the LAST generation of ATi cards. The GTS 250 gets bitch-slapped by the 4870 and 5770. The 5830 is faster than BOTH of those cards! Why don't you go read a book about the video card marketplace instead of opening your mouth and sounding like a complete moron?
  • Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link

    I meant to say a little faster.
  • qwertymac93 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    4890 outperforms gtx285 in crysis warhead, news to me...
  • yacoub - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    The 5770 as it should have been - with a 256-bit bus. Call me when it's $150 and I'll consider it. If the drivers improve as well.
  • HotFoot - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    At the high-end, AMD has moved the performance benchmark a significant amount. I think the 5870 and 5850 have been very solid.

    But for everything else in this generation's linup, it seems that performance has taken a back-seat to features. For the lowest-end cards, that makes sense to me as probably a lot of HTPC customers are after those features. But for mid and mid-high cards in the line-up, I'm much more critical on the performance of the card than the features.

    I've played only one DX11 game so far. Actually, the majority of games in my library are still DX9. It saddens me that anywhere from $120-240 buys less today than it did a year ago.
  • vajm1234 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    well 1st of all lemme start

    i was expecting a hell more from this but nope dunno whats really goin on here..why it lacks performance??

    a) clock to clock performance?
    b) leakage?
    c)everything u can thought about......????????????????

    + i thought there will be price correction like
    225 for 5850
    180 for 5830 (even lower now after the differences) and so on

    sometimes i feel 5850 is a dual gpu's version of 5750 with two gpu's and slight clock change inserted and connected like "two intel dual core with a hypertranspot channel for quad core" and its just optimized for performance Hell now it feels like its a corssfire issue with 5830 -- which is ACTUALLY NOT THE CASE from what we know about all this architecture.

    today i went to buy a 5 series but end up buying a 4 series---

    u know if u just think about it for 5 odd min u get the answer as these DX11 features are secondary @ this point than the performance .....

    not only that all those features are not proper yet like that OPEN CL issue

    @ATI- because of ur @**h*le profit making business we end up with an old generation cards now. FCUK off ur new gen features in price of its performances + not to forget ur NONSENSE PRICING.
  • Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link

    You know, you're crying awfully loud and it's so damn STUPID! You want to blame someone? BLAME NVIDIA FOR NOT HAVING ANYTHING AT ALL! I mean JESUS H. CHRIST, there are nVidia cards out there that are DX TEN POINT ZERO that are STILL selling for more than the 5830 AND 5850! ATi isn't accustomed to being first out of the gate since nVidia has dominated for the last 5 video card generations. If nVidia would've gotten their act together last summer like they should have, we wouldn't be talking about this right now! Give your head a shake, if the cards aren't priced as you want and you don't want an HD 4xxx card, then DON'T BLOODY BUY ONE!!!

    ugh
  • kallogan - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    ...when i saw the price and the tdp. What a disappointment.

    Well played, AMD.

    P.S to AMD/manufacturers : I want a single-cooled gpu to fill the gap between 5670 and 5750. Or a single-slot cooled green/unplugged HD 5750 ;-). Or a single-slot cooled HD 4770.

    It seems like i'll have to build one by myself ;-)

  • phawkins633 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Well....so much for the paper launch thing.
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    I guess now it is a moot point
  • Parhel - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I'd at least update the article. I mean, it's launch day and they're available for purchase. Heck, the PowerColor model is overclocked, has a custom cooler and is available at MSRP. I'm still a fan of the site, but this is a bit embarrassing.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    The article was amended as soon as I woke up this morning.
  • Teemax - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I agreed with the conclusion. HD 5830 is overpriced for its performance.

    I hope Anand will be equally tough on NVIDIA's cards when they come. Overpriced GPUs stink.
  • Slaimus - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I would guess it is priced high so it would limit demand. It is probably just a stop gap production to exhaust the supply of bad chips. Once Nvidia releases competitive products, the price compression would just squeeze this card off the long run.

    If it was too good of a deal, they would be forced to keep supplying it even when the future yields become good.

    It is a relevant product if you need to build a system now, but cannot afford a 5850.
  • psychobriggsy - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    A paper launch is something released to review, with the product not showing up in the shops for *many* weeks, whilst the company isn't saying anything about it.

    Here we have the company saying "they'll be available next week" and giving a perfectly valid reason (get your reviews done before you're all shipped off to cebit), and you're getting all pious.

    Get some sense of scale. If three cards get shipped next week, then call it a paper launch. If thousands get shipped next week, then it's not a paper launch. If Nvidia ship 1000 Fermis on day 1, and none for a month, that's a paper launch, but would you call them out on it?
  • kwrzesien - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Agreed. Cards are available on newegg NOW!

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...;cm_re=a...

    You WON'T find them under the video guided search, not a category yet. Maybe the paper launch should have started a few days ago!
  • kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Someone else has mentioned it, but I have to concur your reviews lately of ATI/AMD products have been overly negative. I personally buy Nvidia products because I prefer thier Linux drivers to ATI's. However, while I've been waiting for Fermi, it does seem the driver article which was unbelievably negative considering it was a driver release designed to improve the driver situation and this article go way too far to prove a point which eschews the whole picture of the situation.

    While I agree the 5830 should be priced better, when you look at what Nvidia is offering (or not offering) it makes sense. First, the 260/216 is barely available at all. Niether is the 275. The 285 is going for nearly $400 and is outclassed by a $300 ATI product (which was referred to as not a good deal). If you want to talk about weird pricing on what is basically an technologically obsolete product that would be it. I personally couldn't believe ATI's desire to "profit-taking" was even mentioned at all for a 20 - 40 dollar difference between horrible and ideal. Care to guess what the 260 and 275 prices were when they released? Try $449 and $600+, how big of an objection was raised to that?

    While I understand the desire to make sure every reviewer gets their Fermi card for review this isn't the way to do it, considering it's almost 6 months late. If we want lower prices nothing would be better than for the other half of the equation (Nvidia) to do their job as well. Just a thought.
  • Voo - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    So you think the 5830 is nicely priced and you would love to buy one? Really? You would pay 240$ for that level of performance?

    I don't think Ryan is the fanboy here, sorry. Also I'd love some examples from the other articles were Ryan was "especially negative" about Ati without any reason.
  • kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    If you're not going to pay attention to what I said in an effort to prove a point then there's really no need to respond further.

    I said "While I agree the 5830 should be priced better" basically saying yes it could be lower. However, there's a difference in looking for a deal within ATI's lineup versus looking for a deal throughout the entire video card market. I specifically said that I bought Nvidia cards for a reason. At this time I cannot upgrade my video card. Why? Because if you like to buy a DX11 card from Nvidia you can't. Not only that but their cards are way over priced right now where this card competes. Even if I wanted to ignore the functionality, I can't ignore the performance.

    The 285 goes for 400 (380 and some change) dollars and the 5850 beats it at 300 dollars. That's a $100 difference before you even look at the 5830. I'll say it again the 5830 isn't much of a deal within ATI's own lineup. However, when looking at what's purchasable within Nvidia's lineup it's priced accordingly. If you were to put prices over the benchmarks you would see a $150+ gap between a 285 and a 260/216. Essentially they (ATI) are charging you $40 for Eyefinity and Dx11 with performance that's slightly better than the 216 which sells between $189 - $200 (if you can find it in abundance). I'd hardly call that highway robbery.
  • Voo - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    So you're agreeing with the main criticsm of this review and still call it unfair? For me a card either has good value or not - independent if the "better" card comes from the same company or not.

    We all know that Nvidia has no interesting cards in the >200$ bracket, but that doesn't mean that any card >200$ from Ati is automatically a hit.
    The first thing I thought when I read the part about "yeah but this card has eyefinity, DX11,.." was, that if you substituted that for CUDA and Physix you had a perfect Nvidia marketing speech ;)
  • kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    "So you're agreeing with the main criticsm of this review and still call it unfair? "

    Same here what would give you the impression that wouldn't be the case for me? First off I don't care per se what manufacturer makes the card. My preference is with Nvidia, but I'm not going to intentionally buy an obsolete card costing upwards of $200. We are not talking budget cards here.

    Let me break it down as to why the 5850 is probably the best value out there right now (even though I don't own one).

    Nvidia 200/200b GPU

    GTX 280 debut price - $649
    GTX 260 debut price - $449

    ATI 5xxx GPU
    5870 debut price - $389
    5850 debut price - $279
    (those prices reflect the actual possible at release not what the manufacturer quoted)

    Do you see the difference? It's just as crazy to say that any >$200 card that ATI releases is a hit, as it is to not recognise that the prices are FAR LOWER then what they normally have been in the past, and not include that reality in your determination of what is value. The 5830 isn't what I would call value, however for the performance of the 5850 (which was also mentioned) it just doesn't make sense to not see the value in that card.









  • Voo - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    No, no I never said that the 5850 aren't good cards or a good value (though I still think that the 48xx cards offered more when they were released - but it's impossible to put cold hard numbers on that, so really no point in arguing about subjective feelings). As a matter of fact I think that the 5850 is probably the best card to get at the moment.

    But the same is just not true for the 5830 - even if you ignore the 4890 argument, the 5830 is priced closer to the 5850 but performs more like a 5770. I mean you get at most ~20% more performance than the 5770 but you can get one for much less than 200$.
  • kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I agree with this. Trust me I'm not going to buy a 5830 anytime soon if ever. I was just alarmed at the comment about the 5850, which was what caused me to post.
  • anactoraaron - Friday, February 26, 2010 - link

    one last thing to say about this. I think anyone that is being forced to pay 15% over MSRP is being ripped off (much like Ryan and Jarred were saying) in regards to the 5850 (as I bought a 5770 3 weeks after release for $150 after MIR and love it at 1080p!). I agree with you even saying what I just did- that if you had ~$300 to spend the 5850 is still the best choice. But since when have the "early adopters" been the ones to get the best deal? Imagine Intel RAISING the price of the X25-M 15% a 1-6 months after release (when everyone caught on to the technology, or finally saved up to make the jump) and then saw the price increase. I think SSD's in general would never have caught on if the X25-M stayed at it's original MSRP 6 months after release. Technology is supposed to lose value as it ages, not the other way around.
    Current price of the 5850 - as it is almost half a year old now - should be at MSRP or 5% below (or more after a rebate). If that was the case, the 5830 would be $50-$70 lower than it is now. And maybe, just maybe, it would be worth buying. ~$20 more over a 5770 to get ~20% more? It would make me regret buying the 5770...
  • kc77 - Saturday, February 27, 2010 - link

    Your using SSD's as a bases for your argument??? Intel's prices were sky high until competition came from other manufacturers. Even today prices on SSD's fluctuate widely. Prices on SSD have been largely stagnant especially on Intel's line.

    " think SSD's in general would never have caught on if the X25-M stayed at it's original MSRP 6 months after release."

    Huh? It easily did. Prices didn't fall at all and in many cases the prices went up. You don't have to believe me check out a couple of articles here regarding the prices of SSD's. You'll find in every conclusion the talk of high prices often above MSRP's in Intel's line.

    Prices didn't fall until Crucial, Kingston, etc started releasing competitive products which drove down the price of SSD's. Hence competition, the same thing that is lacking in the current generation of video cards.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    You include the GTX 200 series (which everyone thought was way too expensive at launch) with the 5800 series, but you don't list the 4800 cards. I think the problem is that ATI's 4800 series made us expect more of $300 cards.

    Granted, if 40nm yields are as poor as some say (or perhaps not that bad, but just not as good as expected), that can end up with prices going up.

    Even with all this talk, I still don't think the 5830 is a great value. It doesn't differentiate itself enough from the 4890 and 5850 in my book. Either spend less for the 4890 and get higher performance, or spend more and get the 5850. I know Ryan says the HD 4890 is hard to find, but you can http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...">still find it in stock for under $200. (http://www.google.com/products?num=100&hl=en&a...">Google is your friend!)

    Really, the big question is what sort of other hardware you're running. 30" LCDs aren't all that common, so 2560x1600 isn't a realistic selling point for the 5830 -- and don't even get me started on Eyefinity! (This coming from one of the few people that could actually set up a 3x30" gaming arena... if I had the space. LOL) 5770 goes for as little as http://www.ncixus.com/products/index.php?sku=48575">$140 ($130 with MIR), and it will handle just about any game at reasonable settings. 1080p with 2xAA or *GASP!* 0xAA? No problemo! That's $100 saved for a card that will still perform admirably, and if you're not sold on DX11 just yet (I'm not) you can spend $20 more for a card that goes toe to toe with the 5830.

    As far as updating the article text, this is Ryan's article so I'm not going to stomp on his toes. The $250 price point is very crowded right now, and last-gen cards at sub-$200 are still available and perform as well... just with a higher power draw and no DX11.
  • kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I don't think the 5830 is a great value either. The thing that set off alarms was when I saw the blurb about the 5850. I was with u for the most part (it's not like I'm going to buy the card) until that section, and was just speechless.

    The reason why I didn't include the 4800 series cards is because they are last generation, not just in name, but technically as well. There are technical differences between the generations, DX11 being the most obvious. The 4890, which released at $250 has had 1-1/2 years of price reductions spurred by competition to reach the price point it can be found at today.

    I would love to have included Fermi in order to do a 1 vs 1 price/performance comparison, but it's not out yet. I'm comparing the latest from both camps. That's is what is providing the backdrop for determining value. We could always include the previous generation but there are obvious reasons why looking at benchmarks alone doesn't tell the whole story. We can only say Dx11 has no impact for so long until it becomes comical.

    If I was buying a card today there's no way in hell I would intentionally buy a Dx10 card for anything more than $100 because I typically game at 1920x1080, which means I don't shop in the budget class. That just doesn't make any sense for me. Regardless of the saturation of DX11 titles, this isn't PhysX or Cuda. We are talking about a Microsoft API that's going to drive game development for the next 2 years at least. What developer isn't going to use it? It's not like we are waiting for developers to create extra debris to fly across the screen.

    Overall I think we are in agreement when it comes to the 5830. I just had a knee-jerk reaction to the 5850 comment as being a bridge too far. It's not like Nvidia just started flirting with $600 price points on new introductions even when the overall value has been less than stellar, which is why I don't view the 5830 as abominable. It's definitely not for me, but it does fill a gap performance-wise within the latest generation of cards for someone who (not me) doesn't have an extra 20 to 30 bucks to spend.
  • Quidam - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link

    This has been an interesting read.

    I'll agree that the 5850 really is a great value card (even at it's current price-point) all other things considered.

    However, I'll also agree with Ryan that the 5830 is a disappointing product and honestly, at it's current pricing, you'd be mad to buy it.

    To summarise, what we get here seems to be a card that is bigger than the 5850 (5870 pcb) uses potentially more power and performs more closely to a 5770 than a 5850. If anything all it does is make the products below and above it look even better.

    I'm not the kind of consumer who looks only at raw power, I like to look at the whole package: physical size; power requirements; heat; noise and of course price.

    To me, the 5830 does not fill the price/performance gap, what it does is give AMD the opportunity to sell otherwise wasted gpu's. Considering the attributes of this card, a competitive price was the one thing that could have made it attractive. As it stands, I'd be bummed if Anandtech did anything else but call this as bad buy.

    What I would like to see is a 5790 -ie an upscaled Juniper. If they could keep the power requirements at a single PCI-E six pin plug and open up the memory bandwidth, that could be one awesome card. Of course such a card would not be the result of defective gpu's from the next model up, so I imagine this is totally fantasy on my part. ie. they would already have made such a card if they could.
  • kc77 - Sunday, February 28, 2010 - link

    I can see where this is card isn't a great value within ATI's lineup and that's the key part "within ATI's lineup". However, do me a favor and hop over to newegg and look at Nvidia's lineup, more precisely the price.

    What ATI is pricing this against is the video card market as whole. More importantly the 260 which the 5830 easily beats. 260's go for 200 - 220. That's a DX10 part mind you without any of the benefits of the 5830.

    Some sites do a price/performance comparison and if a chart was done here you would see the 5830 fits directly above the 260. Other cards within ATI's lineup would likely beat it, however when compared to what nvidia is offering it's priced right. Is it fair? Not really but no company cannibalizes it's own product line when it's already offering a solution that's substantially lower than what the competitor would price it at.

    As far as this being a card salvaged from lesser cores, that's pretty normal in the chip business there's nothing weird about it. The 260-216 was originally what the 260 was supposed to be. However, no one says that nvidia sold defective 260's. If the card works reliably and does what it's supposed to nuff said.

    If your looking for ATI to do the same thing as the 4 series which was offer high performing parts at mid range prices that's just not going to happen when the cards don't have a competitor.
  • Quidam67 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    I never said there was anything weired about using defective chips for a lower-end card. What I said was I'd prefer to see Juniper given more than a 128bit memory bus (and maybe some more ROPS) and call it a 5790. Problem is it would probably perform better than the 5830 so that's never going to happen lol.

    It's artificial for you to point out (again) that the 5830 compares well to nVidia's cards. We already know that -nVidia has not even made it to the party this generation and as far as I'm concerned they are out of the race (this cycle). In a free market, the 5830 competes with other AMD cards as well, and on that basis it fails.

    Things could be worse for AMD, as it's a clear case of which card of theirs should we buy. Not the 5830!
  • kc77 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    If Juniper had a 256-bit bus than it wouldn't be a Juniper. It would be 5830.

    Only if DX11 and Eyefinity, and audio over HDMI mean absolutely nothing, which they do. This is the first time where I've seen anyone make a case that a new Dx spec was irrelevant even though games are available as I type this that take advantage of it.

    Second, what do you think the availability is of the 4890? It's in the same boat as Nvidia it's being phased out. So what exactly in the previous generation are you going to purchase that has the same performance? Your almost comparing it to a phantom card that no longer exists.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Jarred already said most of what I wanted to say: it's not a good value.

    At any rate, you certainly have a good point about NVIDIA being uncompetitive about $200 right now. AMD isn't facing significant competition from NVIDIA right now at those prices, and they're taking advantage of a very rare opportunity to set their own prices and do some profit taking. I can completely understand that.

    With that said, none of this is a great outcome for consumers. And that's who we choose to represent. AMD can do profit taking, but it doesn't mean we have to like it.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I like how people accuse Ryan of being negative against AMD but forget the NVIDIA side of things. Simply put, we're negative against products that aren't a good value. We highly recommend the 5850 and 5870, for example (at least when they're closer to MSRP). The 5770/5750 are decent/good as well, compared with 4870/4850. The 5670 is reasonable for the price (though not a great deal compared to the 4850). The problem comes when we start getting into the lower end cards.

    5450 and 5570 are good for HTPC usage and questionable for gaming. The 5570 is priced such that you could get better gaming performance for less money if you sacrifice DX11. And while we're on a subject of negativity, you'll notice Ryan has ripped NVIDIA to shreds on the GT 240 ("The Card that Doesn't Matter"), the G210 wasn't at all roses, and the GT 220: "the performance of the GT 220 is abysmal. Or rather, the pricing is."

    The way I see it, Ryan is calling it like it is. You want an HTPC card and don't care about gaming? 5570 looks quite good, and 5450 is marginal but cheap. You want to play games, and there are a lot of great options, so why should we recommend mediocre choices? Who cares if the 5830 is a better card than certain competing NVIDIA products if it's not a better card than AMD's own 5850 and 5770?
  • kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    So far it's not coming off that you are recommending anything from AMD/ATI. Look in the closing fourth paragraph this is what was said about the 5850....

    "But the 5850 is priced for profit taking, it’s a fast card but it’s not a great deal."

    That doesn't sound like your recommending the 5850. That could be typo I don't know. But when I saw that I didn't know what to think. How can a card that has no direct rival other than a 295 which is priced higher, not be considered a good value?

    If you noticed I didn't post about those others. Not the 5450, 5570, 240, 210, or 220. There were small things I noticed here and there specifically about reporting the temps of the cards, but nothing earth shattering. However, I noticed a much larger change in tone specifically with the driver article. Since I'm looking to upgrade I was looking for a strictly technical piece on the stability, feature set, and possibly Linux compatibility for the drivers. Instead amongst technical snippets here and there were paragraphs of editorial flourishes which made getting the real deal more complicated than necessary.

    I'm not "accusing" Ryan of anything. I typically read multiple tech sites and so far the last couple you've done just seem in my opinion to be overly negative or more obtuse as they sometimes negate the larger picture. The only reason I've posted at all is to make sure that when Nvidia does release their cards I can fully believe that the viewpoint of the author is honest and true. It matters quite possibly to the tune of $399 or more to me.

  • JarredWalton - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    You're taking quotes from this article, which reflects the current street prices. Let's go back to the http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650...">original 5850 review:

    "The 5870 is still the card to get when price (and size) is no object, but the 5850 is there to fill the gap if you won’t miss some of the performance.... For this fall, we're able to say something we haven't been able to say for quite some time: AMD has the high-end market locked up tight."

    If you add $40 to the price of the 5850, then of course the value proposition is less attractive. This is what happens when NVIDIA can't compete: the 5850 was scheduled to cost less than the GTX 285, and it still does. The GTX 285 is a horrible value right now, all things considered, and since it's priced at $335+ AMD's partners can get away with charging $300+ for the 5850. Given the choice right now, sure, I'd still recommend the 5850 -- just like we did http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=373...">in our recent buyers' guide (albeit with reservations given the budget goal of the guide).

    At $260 the HD 5850 was a slam dunk; at ~$300 it's merely good. As Ryan points out, our allegiance is to the consumer, and there's no way to take a $40 price hike as being beneficial. The economy sucks, gaming is a luxury, and the 5850 went up 15% in pricing.
  • kc77 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I think everyone can understand things change overtime. Your stance however is sitting on both sides of the coin. On one hand your saying "it's not a good deal" but on the other hand your saying it is (if you read previous articles).

    The fact remains that a true competitor to the 5850, 5870, and even to some extent 5830 (though the case is rather slim) don't exist from a technological stand point (heat, performance, features, DX cert). There's just no other way to say it. Compared to what "top of the line" video cards used to cost, it's hard for the 5850 in particular to not be seen as a value. If they were gouging, and we all know what that looks like ($600+ video cards), no harm, no foul on it being less of a value. However, when there's hardly a card that competes with it, AND it doesn't cost 4, 5, or 6 hundred bucks, it's a reasonably good value. No it's not the same type of value that the 4xxx series brought, but then again they didn't arrive before Nvidia, and performance-wise they weren't nearly as dominating.

    Overall I think your response has clarified your stance and you've actually vocalised the point I was trying to make. The problem is that your response to me isn't reflected in the article at all, which gives the impression I was talking about earlier.

    Imagine if the conclusion of the article included your recent response.
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I could say that your criticism is a little negative :) however, we're all free to express our own opinions, and you do make an interesting point.

    By the way, not only have I tried to post this twice, but I did click the Report link by mistake. Sorry! :(
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I could say that your criticism is a little negative as well :) In the end, however, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and you have raised an interesting point.

    By the way, I did misclick the Report link when I was going to reply... sorry about that! :(
  • Lurker911 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Nice review! I feel the same about this card. Theres something strange about your 4870 results. How can 13% higher core and 8% higher memory clocks on the 4890 result in such huge gaps between the two? In far cry2 your 4890 results are nearly 16% faster. Where in most other reviews the difference is avg 10%.
  • Assimilator87 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Hey Lurker, the performance increase comes from the fact that the 4870's a 512MB card and the 4890's a 1GB card and Far Cry 2 loves extra memory.
  • Lurker911 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    That would be the case with techpowerup's review. But anandtech uses a 1gb 4870. The battleforge results here are even more bizarre with 4890 over 20% faster than a 4870 1gb.
  • Paladin1211 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    No, the 4890 is a revised version of the 4870 with slight changes in architecture design. It's not an overclocked 4870 as you may think :)
  • Lurker911 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    What architectural change? Point me to the source of this info. So far from what I read, there are no changes to the rendering architecture. the chip design is a little improved to reduce leakage and allow higher clocks speeds.
  • Lurker911 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    From anandtech's own article: 4890 vs gtx275

    "The Radeon HD 4890 is the designated successor of the HD 4870 and now AMD's fastest single GPU graphics card. This isn't reached with fundamental changes but with increased clock speeds."
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    ..and it'd be nice if AMD did the same with their CPUs ;)
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I wish AMD would release tweaked versions of its Phenom II CPUs like ATi do with their graphics... :)
  • arnavvdesai - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I think you mean its >400$
  • Kibbles - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    With the paper launch and not so good pricing, I'm thinking AMD doesn't really want this to be a good selling product. Just decent enough so they can sell off the defective chips. They're probably stocking up even after this launch anticipating a better yield from TSMC later this year. All the while selling it for a sellable price.

    Also on page 2

    "The 5850E6 is the 6 port mini-DisplayPort card that AMD was using to drive their 6 monitor and 24 monitor setups during the event."

    I think you meant 5870E6.
  • Xtrafresh - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I'm really intrigued by that XFX design, and how short it is. That could actually be a very nice card to be built into portable LAN-rigs or cases that simply dont have a gazilion feet of space to place cards.
    Is it possible to ask XFX these questions:
    1) hoe long exactly is this card going to be?
    2) is it going to have the same MSRP as other 5830s, or can that price be undercus because of smaller PCBs and less components needed?
    3) did they make any compromises in terms of memory or power delevery circuitry to get to this small size?

    I'm intrigued...
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    To be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to the vendor pictures (and I should have). I'm going to ask XFX about that; that really looks like a Photoshop session gone mad.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    And just to reply to myself while waiting on a response from XFX, I found a picture of their 5750. It's identical to the 5830.

    http://www.xfxforce.com/ecms.ashx/85995634-6395-4e...">http://www.xfxforce.com/ecms.ashx/85995...rdModels...
  • 7Enigma - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Ryan,

    I really don't understand the results here. You have this new card with:

    -more stream processors
    -more texture units
    -the same number of ROPS
    -50 MHz slower core clock (that's 5% btw)
    -virtually the same memory clock
    -same bus width
    -same frame buffer size

    How the heck can it be 20% slower than the 4890? Can this really be due to driver issues. On paper I just can't see this being more than 5% slower in a game that is solely bottlenecked by the core clock, and in most cases would expect it to be faster than the 4890.

    Is there something crazy like the 2.15B transistor count is causing the data to travel longer distances (or leakage issues) than the 4890 with its ~1B count? That doesn't jive with my brain but I'm not able to come up with any other reason why the 5830 should be slower....
  • Assimilator87 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Yeah, the most baffling fact from this review isn't how horribly priced the 5830 is, it's how a card with 40%, 40...percent, more shaders and texturing units and a newer architecture can be slower. It's absolutely mind boggling. I'd really love it if Ryan or Anand would do a reevaluation of the Evergreen architecture to gain some insight as to why it's so much less efficient than the R700 family.
  • Paladin1211 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I think Ryan has stated it very clearly:

    "Moving away from the 5450 for a moment, besides the Radeon HD 5770 this is the only other card in the 5000-series that is directly similar to a 4000-series card. In fact it’s the most similar, being virtually identical to the 4550 in terms of functional units and memory speeds. With this card we can finally pin down something we couldn’t quite do with the 5770: clock-for-clock, the 5000-series is slower than the 4000-series.

    This is especially evident on the 5450, where the 5450 has a 50MHz core speed advantage over the 4550, and yet with everything else being held equal it is still losing to the 4550 by upwards of 10%. This seems to the worst in shader-heavy games, which leads us to believe that actual cause is that the move from DX10.1 shader hardware on the 4000-series to DX11 shader hardware on the 5000 series. Or in other words, the shaders in particular seem to be what’s slower."

    http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3734...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3734...
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    And at this point, that's still the best answer I can give you. I don't know exactly why this card is slower; it does well in synthetic benchmarks. A general degree of shader inefficiency still seems to be the most likely culprit.
  • silverblue - Friday, February 26, 2010 - link

    Perhaps AMD can shed some light on the subject, though I expect they'll more than likely wait for you to post a follow-up article before admitting anything. I refuse to believe it's bad drivers that aren't taking proper advantage of the hardware, a la the 8500.
  • pierrebai - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Ask for new benchmark using the lastest AMD drivers. Each release improves the perfs for the new cards. For example, for 10.2:

    DiRT 2 – Overall performance improves up to 8% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5970, ATI
    Radeon™ HD 5800 series, and ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 series products

    Battleforge – CrossFire ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 performance improves up to 6%

    Unigine Heaven – DirectX 9 CrossFire performance has improved significantly on
    ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 and ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 series products

    The Chronicles of Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena – Overall performance on
    ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 improves up to 4%

    ...
  • LordanSS - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Latest drivers are buggy. No can do games with stupid mouse cursor issues and videos causing crashes.

    Until they definitely fix these issues, 9.12 hotfix it is.
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I think someone once said that they believed the 5xxx series to be slower, clock-for-clock, than the 4xxx series. Certainly seems to be ringing true in this case.
  • coldpower27 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Agreed in theory the 5870 is double the 4890, you have the same core clock, 2x the SIMD's, 2x ROP's. 2x the Texture Units, but only a 23% increase in Memory Bandwidth. And on average your looking at 40-50% faster.

    The SIMD's on the 5xxx just aren't as powerful as the one's on the 4xxx Series.

    I hope that is no the case on the Fermi core.

  • Xtrafresh - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Good point. I can see all the extra feature hardware get in the way of straight-up performance as the only explanation i can come up with now.
  • 7Enigma - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    And as a follow-up, could you OC the 5830's core clock 50MHz and rerun one of the tests that has the 4890 beating it by 20%? I'm just wondering if the core clock is starving the card so badly that it's compounding the performance issue.
  • geok1ng - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    We should see more and more of these builds on future generations.
    Die yields are unpredictable, so a chip project should predict a product line with many degrees of performance.

    i wouldn't mind having 5890, 5880,5870,5860,5850,5840,5830,5820 and even a 5810, as long as all offer equivalent performance for the price asked, which is NOT the case here.

    As for the 5870E6, well, it is nice to have a 2GB card that is incapable of driving a 30" monitor. Either lower its price or make an arrangement for mass production of miniDP-Dual-link DVI adapters.

    If AMD is ready to start taking momentum on premium niche market spots, i suggest a Watercooled 5970E6 with 2GB per GPU 4GB total. As it stand it make more sense for a massive E6 setup to go the dual 5850 way, at least one would avoid adapters costs.
  • AznBoi36 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I'm actually very happy with AMD's lineup as it is. At least it's nowhere as confusing as Nvidia with all their re-branding and crap they've pulled.
  • flipmode - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Quite simply, the price of this card is insulting and the performance is disappointing.

    It's slower than a 4890 but 20% more expensive? Ludicrous, ridiculous.

    AMD, this is not the way to treat your customers. I'm all for you making profit, but why don't you try to make some profit with a reasonably priced product?

    Just as important, how bout giving us some cards that don't suck? 5870 and 5850 are nice, but everything else you've released has been disappointing and overpriced.

    Thanks for the review Ryan.
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    This card, if anything, is more like a 5810 (if one existed) than anything else. It's simply just too cut down; if they'd disabled two SIMDs it'd be far more deserving of its current price tag, and they could've resisted raising the core clock to compensate.

    The 4830 was far less cut down in comparison to the 4850.
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Just to add, if all of the 5830 dies are more defective than the 5850 dies, the question remains how defective they are. Some have to be good enough to the point where they just missed the cut for the 5850 but only have one additional defective SIMD, and it would be very nice to be able to unlock this. If that's not possible, couldn't AMD just release an interim product with 1280 SP/64 TU/24 ROP? They can't all be damaged to a similar degree.
  • AznBoi36 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I guess yields at 40nm are "that" bad.
  • Scali - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    "and in the case of OpenCL AMD doesn’t even distribute their OpenCL driver with the rest of their Catalyst driver set yet."

    You said it!
    I'm getting pretty annoyed by this right now.
    AMD had been promoting OpenCL for months, and driver release after driver release, I find NO OpenCL runtimes included.
    nVidia has offered OpenCL to end-users in their official WHQL driver releases since November last year.
    AMD end-users still have nothing, three months later. Which also means that developers can't release OpenCL applications to end-users with AMD hardware. And originally we were told that they would arrive in Q2 2009.
    Pretty ironic, when it was AMD that was promoting OpenCL all the time, and trying to paint nVidia as the evil proprietary Cuda guy, that was not going to support OpenCL.
  • stmok - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    According to this...
    => http://developer.amd.com/gpu/ATIStreamSDK/Pages/de...">http://developer.amd.com/gpu/ATIStreamSDK/Pages/de...
    ...OpenCL support for ATI cards began in ATI Catalyst 10.2 drivers.

    For Nvidia, OpenCL developer tools is here...
    => http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opencl.html">http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opencl.html

    Both AMD and Nvidia support OpenCL. Developer tools on both sides are available.
  • leexgx - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    OpenCL should come with the drivers no matter the size on http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=...">http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=...

    most may just stick with cuda at this time

    quite sure i have read some where that you need to code for Nvidia OpenCL as well as ATI OpenCL
  • Scali - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I'm not talking about developer tools...
    That's the whole point.
    Developers have had access to OpenCL for quite a long time...
    But if I were to release an OpenCL application today, it won't work on regular end-users with AMD video cards. These end-users would need to install the SDK to get their hands on the OpenCL runtimes.
    That's a ridiculous situation, especially since you can only download the SDK after you've registered as a developer with AMD.
    It's just not acceptable.

    With nVidia on the other hand... all the end-user needs to do is install the official WHQL drivers from November or later, and they're up and running. No need to register anything, no need to install an SDK... Just a driver update (if they haven't updated already).

    The most ridiculous part is that AMD wanted to make everyone believe that they were all for OpenCL, and that they were going to push the standard, and that nVidia was trying to block it with their proprietary Cuda SDK.
    As it stands, AMD is the one blocking OpenCL at this point.
    And then we're not even getting into issues such as performance and supported featuresets...
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    If you read further, 10.2 are the base drivers that the SDK is built/tested against. The Catalyst 10.2 driver set does not include AMD's OpenCL driver - that only comes in the SDK.
  • Scali - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    A few months ago, I expressed this problem on another forum, talking about 'lack of OpenCL support' from AMD.
    AMD's Mike Houston was quick to reply that "The Radeon HD5770 [my card] supports OpenCL".
    Yea, I know the CARD does... but the DRIVERS don't... At least, not for developers.
    So I wasn't amused with Mike Houston's reply. He knows what I mean, and he knows that I know that the hardware supports OpenCL.
    Then he started harassing me in a PM, explaining how great AMD's support is and how they work with various ISV's etc.
    Then he asks me what they could possibly improve.
    So I told him that for starters, they could release the runtimes to end users.
    He didn't reply... then the 10.1 drivers were released, and I emailed him, saying that OpenCL was still not bundled.
    Then 10.2 came along... still no OpenCL.
    So I've mailed Mike Houston again. I don't expect an answer this time either.
    So that is how they treat their customers and registered developers... They just give arrogant, cheeky replies when you point out a real issue with OpenCL adoption... then they harass you in PM (apparently they don't dare to do it in public.. so they know their conduct is questionable)... and then they ignore you.

    The least you can do is be honest about your shortcomings, and remain friendly towards your customers/developers.
  • Scali - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I actually did get a reply this time... but not a very useful one.
    The roadmap for OpenCL is only available to ISVs under an NDA. I'm not sure why it has to be a secret though... unless you have something to hide perhaps?
    Aside from that he said that they wanted to have the end-user release co-incide with the release of OpenCL applications from these ISVs.
    Doesn't tell us a lot, since we don't know which ISVs they are, what products it is about, or when they are expected to release.

    But it doesn't strike me as if AMD is on the verge of releasing OpenCL to end-users. Sounds more like it's still months away.
    Too bad for AMD, the first applications with OpenCL support are already available... such as GPU Caps Viewer, which recently had OpenCL tests added. The latest SiSoft Sandra suite also has OpenCL support in its GPGPU benchmarks.
  • piroroadkill - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Disappointing, I'd expect it to beat the 4890 in all tests, even by just a hair.

    As the title says. Wrong price.
  • Paladin1211 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    It's nVidia to blame. I think ATI might soon show its HD 6870 at $1000 and HD 6890 at $2000.

    Come on nVidia, come on...
  • Leyawiin - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Thanks for the informative review Ryan. You made me feel better about my purchase last week of a Gigabyte GTX 260 Super Overclock (based on Anandtech's review of it btw). Saved money, got better performance and I don't need DX11 at this point.
  • Paladin1211 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Thanks for the informative review Ryan. You make me feel much better about my purchase last October of an HD 5850 (based on Anandtech's review of it btw). Saved money, got better performance and I really need DX11 at this point.
  • poohbear - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    why did you guys use outdated catalyst drivers for this review??? The 10xx series catalysts were supposed to provide performance increases for the 5xxx series, soit makes no sense that u use such old catalyst drivers?
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    9.9 would have been used for the 4xxx cards.
  • pierrebai - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    This is ridiculous and a poor service. The old drivers are more in tune with older cards. If I buy a new card, I would install the newer drivers do I that's what I want to see compared.

    It makes me doubt the honesty of the review: it makes you look like you wre pissed by the paper launch and chose to use old drivers to make the card look bad.

    Did you use 5-months-old drivers for nvidia cards too?
  • leexgx - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    did they even have the older cards i would if guessed that 9.9 for the 4890 was due to them not having the cards
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    No, we have them. We do a rolling benchmark suite; if you've pay attention to our charts we do what amounts to adding new cards to existing charts, as it's impractical to rebench every card with every driver change. We do rebench cards if we find that the drivers change performance significantly, but that's actually rarely the case.

    Otherwise everything gets refreshed at the 6 month mark. So that's why the 9.9s go with the 4000 series cards, because that's when this data was originally compiled.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I believe what Ryan is saying is that he *did* use the latest drivers with the 5830. I don't believe the older drivers will even install on the card. The older drivers were just used on the 4xxx series cards, not the 5830.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Drazick - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    It seems that if you used the latest drivers you would have found that its performances are equal to the HD4890.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    We did. We used the review drivers AMD sent us, version 8.703RC2.
  • Drazick - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    According to what you wrote you used 9.9 for all ATI's Cards.

    So I don't get it, did you use 10.2 for the HD5XXX?
  • ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    While this is a good review, I'd suggest that people who're looking to buy a card check out other reviews of it, too. I was just reading the TechSpot one, and it looks like if you're a CoD 6 fan (and it's been a best selling game), then the 5830 beats the 4890 by a long run and is close to the 5850. So while it's not as well rounded as the 5850, the 5830 might still have its place. (Though I agree I'd love to see all these prices come down.)
  • ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    BTW, two other games where it beat the 4890 well in that review were Wolfenstein and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat. In the latter the 5830 is about twice as fast as the 4890 and quite close to the 5850.
  • bill4 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Stop crying, over what is barely a paper launch at all. It seems you yourself aren't even sure that cards wont hit etail today. And my memory is fuzzy, but havent several recent AMD and Nvidia launches in the past year been "paper"? The difference is recently it's by a week or two instead of a month plus as in the past.

    If you dont like it so much, put your money where your mouth is and refuse to review the card until it's available. I'm betting plenty of your competitors will always be more than willing to review any "paper launch", so the only one losing would be you, as it should be.

    On to the card..I agree with your view there. I have a 4890, had I been in the market for a $200-ish card today, 5830 might have been a good choice. But I would take it even farther than you and say the card doesn't really become compelling until maybe as low as $170. Especially given it's major ROP crippling would just leave me uneasy about it's performance in future games. This leaves 5850 as still the only real "budget" choice imo. Save up 300 or dont bother. Heck I think even a 5770 is a better deal than this.

    I suppose, if you are in the market for a Dx11 card and have $240 and not a penny more, you now have a faster choice. Dubious honor, though.
  • Ben90 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I'm sorry, but your first two paragraphs is probably the stupidest thing I've read in a while. Ill admit a week isn't very much to fret over, but your post reads like: "AMD/Nvidia can launch whatever they want, whenever they want... If you don't like them releasing the HD 9870/GTX 626262 early just lose your job as a reviewer you baby"

    I'm glad you can write negative things in your reviews Ryan. I get tired of reading sites clearly sucking up because they got something free.
  • bill4 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    First of all, this is like the flimsiest paper launch ever. He admits HES NOT EVEN SURE ITS A PAPER LAUNCH. But still complains.

    Second, again fuzzy memory, but I'm pretty sure SEVERAL recent AMD/Nvidia launches have been paper.

    Paper launches are good. The product will be available when it's available in either case. The only difference is, how soon you get the product info. The sooner the better imo.

    If a world exclusive GTX 470/480 review hit the web tomorrow, would you refuse to read it because it's a paper launch? Hell no, everything would be exactly as it is now, except you'd have more info sooner.
  • Spoelie - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Paper launches are very bad because they are misleading, with no guarantee of the product actually making it too retail, or in the same configuration as the retail samples.

    Right until the chips are in boards and on their way to the retail store in sufficient quantities, too much can go wrong.

    I remember around the X800 vs 6800 era when paper launches were at their peak (X800XT, X800XTX, X800XTX PE -nicknamed press edition-, X850XT, ... all very marginal variations of the same card) there were also X700XT reviews all over the place (like here http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2214...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2214... ), but the card NEVER made it to retail. Which makes the review kinda pointless. There was a X700PRO though, small comfort.
  • monomer - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    It looks like the 5830's are hitting retail today, if NewEgg is to be believed. $239.99 for the Bare-bones Powercolor, and $264.99 for the Sapphire which comes with COD-MW2.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...p;cm_re=...
  • shiggz - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    So basically its the same price, performance, TDP as my gtx 260 I bought a year ago?

    I will upgrade when I can buy the first video card by either company that fits these specs.

    - 20+% faster then 5870
    - 250-300$
    - 28nm
    - max 170 watt TDP
    - good fan no louder then my 260 (spend way more time reading then gaming)

    I might jump in the next 6-9 months If I see a 5890 with a good non-stock fan for 275$. I don't think Nvidia will have anything in terms of price, performance, TDP in my range any time soon.

    My money, My 260, and I can certainly wait longer then ATI or Nvidia can so well see who gets me first. :)
  • Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - link

    Your GTX 260 is on par with the HD 4870 and HD 5770. Where do you get the idea that a GTX 260 is a match to the HD 5830/4890? I call that wishful thinking at its best! LOL
  • Paladin1211 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Quote:

    "I might jump in the next 6-9 months If I see a 5890 with a good non-stock fan for 275$. I don't think Nvidia will have anything in terms of price, performance, TDP in my range any time soon."

    If Nvidia can't come out with anything in terms of price, performance, TDP in your range any time soon, what makes you think of a 5890 for $275? No less than $475 I would say, even at 28nm ^_^
  • AznBoi36 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    You think you can get faster than 5870 performance with a low price and 28nm? Not to mention even 40nm yields are still pretty horrible.

    You're going to have to wait a lot longer than 9 months buddy. Try 2 years.
  • shiggz - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I mentioned I may jump early 6-9 months from now for a good deal on a 5890. If not good deals happen I'll wait for next gen.

    This gen has already been delayed was planned to be released last summer/fall. Fermi2 is not 2 years away. Next gen development works in parallel not sequential. Just because this gen was late doesn't mean next gen will be. Reports from Global foundries and TSMC are that 28nm is developing well and on schedule for end of this year.
  • coldpower27 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Your gonna have to keep waiting then...
  • ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    The graph shows the 5770 getting 46.6 fps at 1920x1200, which is out of line with its relative power as well as the 42 fps it gets at 1680x1050.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Yep, a number got transposed. Fixed.
  • ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Makes me wonder how the 5770 fares at 2560x1600. In the original review it got 35.9, but I see that the frame rate went up at the other resolutions, so it might be closer to 40 fps.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    No, the only issue is that I wrote down the 1920 data for 1680 and vice versa. Performance for anything else is the same.
  • ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    You didn't understand my comment. I'll try again:
    The 5770 seems to provide pretty good performance in this game (even after your fix). In the original 5770/50 review it scored 35.9 fps at 1600x1200, but it looks like the frame rates have gone up since then, probably thanks to drive changes, so I wonder how well it performs now at that resolution (which was unfortunately not mentioned in the current review).
  • ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Oops, meant 2560x1600, not 1600x1200.
  • Mygaffer - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Is it just me, or does the 4890 compete head to head with the GTX285? I didn't realize it was that fast.
  • strikeback03 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539

    looks similar to a little slower
  • coldpower27 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I would say on average 4890 = GTX 280...

    GTX 285 would be a tad faster.
  • AnandThenMan - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Yet another needlessly negative article for an AMD product. Colour me shocked, and hey nice touch, you put the #1 downfall of the card right in the title, excellent!

    gave the card a gold award despite the somewhat questionable price, and higher power consumption vs. the 5850. BTW, don't even bother defending the review, I've heard all the excuses and reasons before.
  • philosofa - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Shutup shutup shutup shutup shutup shutup shutup shutup shutup.

    BTW - I own a 5870, STFU - just, S.T.F.U.

    You clearly haven't read the review, are a fanboi or are paid by ATI. I don't give a flying frack what other reviews have said - you clearly haven't read the facts as this is an overpriced, strangely slow, power hungry card.

    Why does there always have to be some muppet with rose-tinted goggles on who feels facts are subservient to his pathetic allegiance to a design house? JUST SHUT UP. God...
  • Parhel - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I also thought the 5870 review here was very negative. Anandtech gave it the worst reception of any major reviewer. It was the only time I remember being disappointed by a review on Anandtech in the maybe 8 years I've been a reader.

    Expecting a $349 MSRP card (at the time) to outperform last generation's $600 dual GPU card across the board is unrealistic. And then, disregarding price, power consumption, heat, noise, and new features, and basing the conclusion solely on FPS isn't the type of thoughtful product review I've come to expect from Anandtech.

    Believe it or not, I'm not a fanboy or someone with a huge emotional investment in these products either. Hell, I don't even play PC games.
  • DominionSeraph - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Hey, people with no accomplishments of their own have to get a self-image from somewhere.

    Just sit back and let them be inferior. It's not like there's any other option open to them.
  • DominionSeraph - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Needlessly negative? It's 4890 performance for $40 more than a 4890. Where's the upside in paying more for the same performance?

    This is a new generation of cards. A new generation is supposed to bring a reduction in the price of performance, not an increase.
  • medi01 - Friday, February 26, 2010 - link

    It was actually mentioned in the article.
  • Voldenuit - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I wouldn't buy it even at $180.

    Sorry, ATI. NO SALE.
  • Paladin1211 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    May be you should get a GTX480 for $810?

    PhysX, CUDA are waiting for you :)
  • xeopherith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I agree. I just bought two 5770's for $264 from the egg. How can you charge so much for a 5830! To get me to buy the card it would have to be priced around the 5770's current price so that I could run in crossfire. Maybe put the price of two 5830's just slightly above the 5850. Maybe $165.

    I mean buying the two 5770's saved me a bunch of money over a 5850 and can be better performance in the tests. Why make things look even worse for the higher end.
  • AznBoi36 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    You guys are just too spoiled and have short term memories. You can blame the prices on lack of competition from Nvidia.
  • gumdrops - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    oh ok cool
  • MadMan007 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Since when is ATi taking marketing technique pointers from nVidia?

    "...the 5830 has some very useful advantages over the 4890 – DX/DirectCompute 11, Eyefinity, better OpenCL support, and bitstreaming audio..."

    Substitute PhysX, CUDA, and 3D display and that would be an NV marketing line.

    (btw why does using quote tags always throw an error in article comments?)
  • Ramon Zarat - Saturday, February 27, 2010 - link

    I beg to differ. There are very clear distinctions between the technologies you mentioned!!!


    CUDA: Proprietary API, closed platform strictly regulated by Nvidia that will be soon obsolete due to OpenCL broad adoption. Market penetration is still limited to vertical market niches.
    Stream: Based on OpenCl, an open platform supported by the whole community representing the future of the industry which will presumably enable any if not all applications and games properly coded and compiled to benefit from it.

    PhysX: Proprietary API supported by only a dozen games out of which 10 are very bad.
    Havok: Will transparently use OpenCL open standard to do in-game Physics, which will ensure a wide adoption.

    Nvidia: Bitsreaming *REGULAR* audio over HDMI
    ATI: Bitstreaming *TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio* audio over HDMI

    3D vision: Proprietary API. Need one of *ONLY* 4 Nvidia approved 120Hz LCD, ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/3D_Vision_Requirement...">http://www.nvidia.com/object/3D_Vision_Requirement... ) and the games must be supported in driver. Costly setup, low market penetration.
    Eyefinity: Actually work out of the box for 2D environment. You only need any 2 LCD/CRT + 1 LCD with display port (any brand) or a DVI/HDMI panel with an active converter. A 6 ports version is launching in a couple of weeks. For 3 panels gaming, game profiles are now outside drivers and available almost as soon as a new games come out. Drivers for games still need some polishing.

    I try very hard to be objective, but the facts speak by themselves. ATI is doing better technology right now and shouldn't be ashame to publicize its superiority. By contrast, Nvidia's totalitarian TWIMTBP program, dictatorial proprietary stuff everywhere, and deceptive general attitude as of late ("late", as in the last 5 years...), are ethically highly questionable. The day ATI do the same, I will denounce them as well.
  • piroroadkill - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Exactly, nobody gives a shit.

    The 4890 is faster and cheaper, the end
  • ImSpartacus - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    No kidding. I am so thankful that I got my 4890 when it came out. I only paid $225 for it too.

    It still hasn't been topped in its price point.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I picked up my 4890 in Oct for $189 and still laughing about it.

    I won't bother upgrading until the successor too the 5xxx series comes out.
  • kmmatney - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I jumped on the MSI HD4890OC deal for $180 a year ago, and actually received the rebate after 4 months. Amazing that you can't spend the same amount of maney and get something that performs better a year later.
  • strikeback03 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Not really that amazing, it is what happens when there is no real competition. If Nvidia can shock the world and drop something new and good at the $200 price point it is a good bet you will see the whole market adjust quickly.
  • Deville - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Exactly. It's silly to offer another card that performs in the range of last gen's cards. What's the point of "upgrading" if there's no upgrade?
    If it can barely keep up with last year's models, how can we expect it to do the DX11 stuff? And isn't the DX11 stuff pretty much the only reason to upgrade anyway?

    Here's the problem when comparing new versions of 5000 series cards:
    The numbering system helps, but we have precious little data to show us how DX11 even performs under these new cards.

    I love reading your shootouts, but give us DX11 benchies, please.
  • san1s - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    that's exactly what I was thinking
  • gumdrops - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Where are all the DX11 game tests like DIRT 2 or Alien vs Predator? BattleForge is the only one and it's unclear if the game was even run in DX11 mode for cards that support it.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    We redo our test suite roughly every 6 months. We'll be redoing it in time for GF100, but this uses the same suite we had for the 5870 launch. In the mean time benchmarking DX11 games doesn't really tell us a whole lot when the results are going to be perfectly in lockstep with the performance differences of the 5000 series cards.
  • gumdrops - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    The Fermi cards that are coming out in April aren't exactly competing in the same price point as this one and it'll be months more before NVIDIA even announces mainstream Fermi derivants.

    It would be nice to know if this card is closer to a 5850 in DX11 performance than a 5770.
  • Calin - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    Yes, it would be nice to know.
    However, a new test methodology would invalidate the earlier results - unlike now, when you have a graph with 20 cards, you'll have a graph with two cards (that's it, until the old cards are retested, which will take quite a bit of time).
  • ET - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    But Fermi being in another price range might not prevent Anandtech from testing the lower end cards again. They did test the 3870 in the 5x00 reviews, which I thought was a nice touch.
  • HotFoot - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    It really was nice to see a 3870 in the graphs. I don't upgrade my video card every generation, and in fact this round went from a 3870 to a 5870. I hope in a couple years' time I'll be able to see the odd 5870 performance comparison to some 7xxx-generation (or nvidia equivalent).
  • sc3252 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    I can't say I am surprised, the 5770 was a huge let down, and the 5450 wasn't much better. Really I was thinking the same thing looking at every graph, way to much. It shouldn't even be priced at $200 more like $189. You should have just given them a big fat F at the end of the review.

    As a 5850 owner I really do think a lot of the Directx 11 effects really don't go well with the cards, the cards take to much of a hit to enable the effects a lot of the time and makes me feel like I am gaming on a umm 5800 fx series card.
  • smokedturkey - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link

    This is the reason I am still using a Radeon X1900 Crossfire Edition i picked up on Ebay for $65 to play Oblivion at 1650x1080 high settings. hahaha I wonder where the performance vs. price has really come into play these last few years?
  • ev1l - Friday, July 9, 2010 - link

    I want to buy a new video card and i can not...

    I have a old 8800gts512 and i still dont have any reason to change it....
    I saw less than 100w for all my system, silence and fresh

    i ply crysis, i ply dirt, i ply stalker, left4dead2 etc.... more 5 or 10fps for 300$

    I want some real progress pls

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