Hardware ATI Radeon HD 5830 1GB Review

...I was hoping to see fermi in the shelves after CeBit *sigh*

Want a 5870 but without competition the price is just too steep.

 

Thats looking like a certainty is it not?

 

Seeing how Mike Magee is reporting that the cards have been delayed until April since the reference designs aren't ready, yeah, its going to be after Cebit. Well after Cebit, as a matter of fact.

 

I was hoping more in the line of: show at Cebit and start selling... Oh well.

 

Can't help that ati has missed the boat somewhat here. Sure the high end is good, but there's very little incentive to buy mid or low end 5 series parts because you can get 4 series or nvidia parts that are faster for less. All the added features other then power consumption are mostly meaningless because they aren't fast enough to make use of them.

Its not like the days of say the 6600GT which managed to be cheap while matching the performance of high end parts from the previous generation.

Now even the high end parts have gone up in price, so many would be very reluctant to buy one because they'd feel ripped off.

Seems instead of selling tons of cards before nvidia can compete ati have managed to put most of their prospective customers into a holding cycle waiting for nvidia before spending any money.

 

Not sure where your pricing came from, but these cards are being launched in the US for $235 USD. I think there's some screwing going on with your suppliers.

 

I also noticed that everyone is commenting on the size of the card, but the XFX card in the pic at the start of the review is a LOT shorter than the others. About the same as the 5770. There seem to be several inconsistencies with this card.

 

There doesn't appear to be a reference design for this chip, so the board makers can make whatever PCB they want for it.

 

The problem is that they disabled a bit too much with this card, not only is it going to cost a bit, but it's not going to sell well at all.

 

While the 5830 in it's current price position maybe low on value, what has got me really interested is that with this generation of cards ATI certainly seems to know it's product. The cards seem to be well seperated, to me this bodes very well for the first refresh design of the Cypress GPU.

Anyone willing to put a bet on ATI's refresh coming out before the first Fermi chips? lol

But seriously, ATI have a really strong position here, they are getting valuable information on the performance of their chips, so their R&D guys can be working on providing a refresh to the GPU design. They also get a cash influx to recover R&D costs so far, and to get them well into the next chip design process. They've had to play catch up, but it seems to me, looking at the last four generations - 2xxx, 3xxx, 4xxx & 5xxxx, they have made steady inroads into NVidia's architechture lead, as well as moving on steadily in unit sales. ATI's current business model seems to be working very well for them.

I think this situation could actually cause big scale changes at NVidia, and maybe cause them to get their GPU focus back in order and really take the ATI threat seriously for once, and produce some powerhouse cards.

Exiting times ahead in the GPU market

 

You can't really blame ATI on pricing, afaik they are having supply issues and they need to make serious money from the R&D before NVidia join the party, but then we can all protest with our pockets -- I'm holding off on a next gen upgrade until all the players are in the market... (ok by all I mean NVidia, not Intel et al)

 

Tbh I'm glad it's overpriced, it's not interfering with my plan to give it another quarter or two and then look at the 5770 vs whatever else has appeared in the wake of Fermi at the midrange to budget end. I see what Teq means, until the financial year end in another month's time I don't expect to see many good deals at all.