Results Analysis and Overclocking

We’re not going to talk too much about in game performance as, due to the fact the XFX HD 5830 1GB shipped at stock clock speeds and performed identically to the ATI HD 5830 sample in our original HD 5830 review in every single test. Suffice to say that the HD 5830 still performs pretty much smack bang in the middle between the £115 Radeon HD 5770 and £245 Radeon HD 5850, and while this sometimes fails to eclipse the performance of last year’s HD 4890 1GB, for the most part the XFX HD 5830 delivers solid performance at 1,680 x 1,050 and even at 1,920 x 1,200 so long as you keep the anti-aliasing down.

What’s more of interest though is the card’s power consumption, thermals and overclocking potential as these all depended on the choice of XFX. Out of the box the XFX was similar to our reference HD 5830 when it came to power consumption, with the full system pulling 138W at idle: more than any other 58xx series card. At 246W under full load this was a little more than a HD 5850 but still 20W less than a HD 5870.

Thermal performance was varied with the XFX running at a wonderfully cool 13°C above ambient at idle, but heating up to 53°C above ambient under full load – not too far off the ferocious heat of a HD 4870 X2! However, the driver controlled cooling fan never rose above 33 per cent throughout our testing, so despite running hot it’s more important to note the XFX HD 5830 still remained stable and was extremely quiet, even under heavy load.

Overclocking changed the story significantly though and following an hour or so with AMD’s GPU Clock tool and the card’s fan running at its default auto setting, we had managed to tease the Core clock from 800MHz to a mighty 930MHz and the memory clock from 1GHz to 1.2GHz – improvements of sixteen percent and twenty percent respectively.



This resulted is a healthy thirteen percent performance jump at 1,680x1050 and a sixteen percent improvement at 1,920x1,200 in Crysis at high detail. However, power consumption also spiked to a whopping 175W at idle (as the card doesn’t clock itself down) and 263W at load – within 5W of the HD 5870. Heat output also jumped from a 13°C delta T at idle to 29°C, and the load delta T also climbed to 60°C – on par with an HD 4870 X2. Despite these increased temperatures though, the card’s cooling fan remained at 33 per cent, and was unintrusively quiet throughout.

Final Thoughts

Our first look at the Radeon HD 5830 was somewhat tarnished by the unrepresentative performance of the £200+ price tag. It failed to eclipse nine month old hardware like the Radeon HD 4890, and was further frustrated by prices for the HD 5850, which at one point dipped to less than £210, but are now climbing towards £250.

We theorised then that the fair price point considering the HD 5830’s performance lying almost exactly in between that of the HD 5770 and HD 5850 would be around £180, and it’s good to see XFX not only taking note, but actively driving down prices to a fairer and more competitive level as well as including a triple AAA game, making this far more than a basic OEM bundle.

The third party cooler is surprisingly capable despite its diminutive size and does a good job of keeping the card cool at idle while at the same time not spinning up to deafening levels under load and the addition of a Steam redemption code for AVP only sweetens the deal.

While the HD 5830 as a GPU is still a little underwhelming the XFX ATI Radeon HD 5830 is a good example of the card and with the aggressive sub £200 price tag, capable cooler and decent amount of overclocking headroom is worth much more consideration than at launch. Those who bought a mid-range card last generation will still want to look higher up the range for a real performance boost but for those in the market for a new DX11 card below £200, with the HD 5850 having priced itself ever higher, will struggle to find better.

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

Score Guide