The Official 5830 Thread!

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 10:20

I looked but couldn't find one! Looks like they've been such a flop so far due to the pricing that no-one has been interested.

I found one online on sale anyway, so it's arriving on Monday! So thought I'd post this up. This thread is for anything really, reviews, benchmarks, overclocking, pictures. Basically any 5830 related stuff.

ATI Reference Example

Reviews/Benchmarks etc

PowerColor HD5830 PCS+ Unboxing.

Video review with lots of benchmarks.

Review of the Powercolor PCS+ 5830

Nice overclock of a Sapphire 5830.

Comparison with the upcoming nVidia 465.

5830s in Crossfire - Interestingly some of the result show the scaling to be greater than 100%.

5830s in Crossfire Again - This time similar results, with crossfire scaling sometimes going above 100%

Pics of mine.

New updated pics of mine.

Results of my Crossfire benchmarking.

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 11:04

Well now the prices are dropping (albeit elsewhere only!), I think it's going to be a proper contender now. I paid £164 for mine, £172 including postage, whereas a 5850 is around £240 at the cheapest and the 5770 £110, so at around £160 it fits in nicely if you ask me.

Can't wait until it arrives, my 4670 blew me away when I got that because before the spec in my sig I had a Socket 478 P4 HT powered thing with a NVidia 5200A, so I've got pretty high hopes.

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 11:24

Those are both the reasons I went for one. The 5770 would probably have been fine, but I wouldn't have got one of the £110 ones, it would have to have been one of the overclocked ones like the XFX AVP Edition or the XXX Edition, which are £140-150. The 5850 on the other hand is £240 without postage for the cheapest models in stock, and more like £260 for the overclocked models.

The 5830 on the other hand was £164, and it's an overclocked one anyway.

EDIT: If you fancy watching an unboxing video.... I find these pretty funny at times, but it kills time I suppose. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mCHSlQ-r6g

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 11:34

phatboy said:
yeah i saw that offer as well, now worth paying that price for especially as from the reviews it overclocks pretty well over the already raised speeds too

It does look like a very good deal to me, time will tell though I suppose. You could get two and run CF for roughly £330, which is 5870 money but the CF 5830 will probably thrash a single 5870. You also get to have two big manly looking cards to make you feel cool...

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 12:12

494W peak power draw for crossfire is kinda worrying, on their bare bones system aswell, every component in my system draws more power than the test system I think. If I were to overclock aswell, I could easily end up pushing my 650W PSU to the limit.

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 12:21

Ah I see. I'll bench it myself when it arrives anyway and see what it draws. CF is a long way off anyway, going from a 4670 to a 5830 will be a big enough jump for me for now.

EDIT: The Antec power supply calculator reckons I should use at least a 620W PSU, and that's when running an overclock, which I don't any more, so looks like 650W should be fine.

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 20:15

RavenXXX2 said:
They use more power than a 5850 as well and that's just if you can afford 165 for a 5830, I suggest you save up a bit more and get a 5850.

A bit more doesn't really mean £80-90 more though does it?

Muel · 8 May 2010 at 22:01

Well from what I hear they need 30cm of space, but that includes the power connectors, so you can measure up and decide pretty easily.

Muel · 10 May 2010 at 12:59

I woke up this morning, wandered into the office and there was a package sitting on my desk, I'm assuming my Dad brought it back from work early.

Anyway i got it fitted, JUST fits in an Antec 300. I had to move my hard drive and fit the power cables to it first, then slot it in at an angle and just jimmy it about until it would go into position. It's actually not all that snug, it's got a good 20mm of clearance from the hdd bays all round, just the power connectors that made it a pain.

Anyways I only had a bit of time to try it out so I haven't really tested it, but it's noticeably better than the 4670, which is nice.

Haven't checked temps or anything yet though either, I'm guessing it's going to be pretty toasty at the moment, the airflow is pretty dire...

Muel · 10 May 2010 at 17:49

Depends on the CPU and overclock, but yes in theory, on my system with a 140W CPU the Antec calculator recommended at least 620W.

The actual draw in gaming though won't get that high, that's just if I ever manage to max every single component at the same time, and if capacitor aging has had a big effect.

EDIT: I noticed a decent improvement in NFS Shift earlier, but that ran well on the 4670, all full settings apart from the filtering thigy. (Can't remember the proper name of it, the billionare, trillionare etc one). The real test will be COD4 for me, as that ran badly on the 4670 to start with. Worse than MW2 which is strange. :s

Muel · 10 May 2010 at 18:13

In that case, why does anyone buy 1000W+ PSUs?

I'd love a modular 1000W Corsair PSU though.....

Muel · 10 May 2010 at 19:48

Picture time!

The old 4670, and my best possible cable management without modding the case. This will be done soon I promise.

Next to each other.

And in goes the 5830. (Just).

Le boxes.

EDIT: COD4 is running at all settings maxed out, no idea on the framerate but it looks to me like it's now limited by my 60hz monitor, which is good.

Another I've noticed is how much faster all the games load than before, I thought it was my hard drive limiting it before, but it was clearly the 4670. Well happy with it! If you could all recommend some taxing games for it that'd be schweet.

Muel · 10 May 2010 at 21:35

OK thanks for that, I don't really follow the game world so I've no idea what's good these days.

Crysis sounds like a plan though. I don't mind running textures and that on low, as long as I can run 1920x1200 with fairly decent FPS.

Muel · 10 May 2010 at 23:08

I don't think they're actual 5870 boards. The deal is that ATI haven't issued a reference design for the board as they usually do, so the card manufacturers can pretty much so what they want. The powercolor ones use the same board form as the 5870 because (I think) this allows them to use the same cooler. I don't know for sure if they use the same boards or just the form though.

The XFX ones look a lot shorter, it could be a custom board form or even the 5770 form.

Cheers for the advice on games by the way Spririts, I've just been monitoring mine, it went to 50C but was only using 21% fan speed, so I assume it has a fair bit more power to give.

EDIT: From watching the stats change, it looks like 21% is the lowest the fan goes at all, so mine was basically idleing under COD4. Tommorrow when my HDMI cable arrives I'll be able to get my second monitor working again and monitor the load and temps properly.

Muel · 11 May 2010 at 00:41

I might venture into overclocking again one day then. With such a good cooler it may even be possible to run them CF with heavy overclocks without the top one getting too toasty.

Muel · 11 May 2010 at 08:26

Bit worried, I was just playing the Crysis demo and I think I was getting rather a lot of capacitor squeeling? Is this actually bad for the card or can I just ignore it?

I've heard of people RMAing over this but if it's just a bit of noise, I'll be happy to ignore it. You can only really hear it with the side panel off and the volume muted.

EDIT: The noise is none existant in game play. All running at full settings apart from Anti-Aliasing is x4 and the resolution is 1680x1050. It doesn't offer 1920x1200, any ideas how to make this work? Or is it because it's only a demo?

Muel · 11 May 2010 at 10:05

Aye it was rather scary, it's making no noise at all now though which is nice.

Just played the Crysis demo through from start to finish, I've gotta get this game.

Highest the temps went was around 50C, fan went to 22% this time! I can't remember turning on VSync, but it's probably on because on the loading screens I get a lot more funny lines and stuff, and the squeeling is audible, but during gameplay even when muted I can't hear anything and the lines aren't there any more.

Muel · 11 May 2010 at 18:34

I would, but as far as I know overclocking voids the warrenty? At the moment it's fast enough for me anyway, although I bought Crysis from eBay today, brand new for £8, so if it doesn't void the warrenty then I might well have a play about with it.

Going from 825/1050 to 900/1200 won't really make a huge difference though will it? Especially as I believe it's the number of rops that limit the performance on these, not the memory speed.

Muel · 11 May 2010 at 19:50

Aye well I used to run my CPU overclocked, but I worked out it was only a 12% increase in performance and I never had it maxed out, so I put it back to stock.

I can't risk any of that! I use my system for Uni work and web development aswell, I've got all my documents syncing constantly using dropbox.com, but I can't really risk popping something and having it not running for ages.

Muel · 11 May 2010 at 23:16

I suppose I do have a netbook to work on anyway...

I've just sent Powercolor a message asking if overclocking using the ATI Overdrive utility will void the warranty. It's supplied with the drivers so it shouldn't really, but then again it's in their intrest to find any way they can of making your warrenty void.

I'm happy with my default speed at the moment, but Crysis should be arriving soon and I'd like it to run as well as possible. I was playing the demo this morning at all settings on high, (then tried very high but I got more stuttering every now and again, the FPS was still good enough though), but only at 1680 x 1050, for some reason I didn't have the option for 1920x1200. :/