# ASUS EAH 5830 DirectCU



## W1zzard (Feb 23, 2010)

Today we have with us the ASUS EAH 5830 DirectCu 1024 MB, a premium non-reference implementation of the Radeon HD 5830. The way its cooler is designed, and going by ASUS' choice of components, the EAH 5830 DirectCu is catered to the value performance enthusiast who can squeeze the last ounce of performance out of it by overclocking.

*Show full review*


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## Semi-Lobster (Feb 25, 2010)

Wow! Great review Wizz! As for the 5830 itself, I'm also mixed on how I feel about it, ATI crippled this card a little TOO much. There was really not reason to cripple it to the point where the 4890 actually edged it out a little but at least there is an alternative between the 5770 and the 5830 and choice is always great (just like choice for all these cool custom coolers the 5830 seems to be popping out with!).

IMO there's only one 'performance' gap left which is the 5670 (to put it basically, about as good as a 9600 GT) and the 5750 (about as good as a GTS 250) but the price difference between them is soo miniscule (about $20 generally) that this is probably going to be the entire 5000 series, all neatly announced and for retail before the GTX 470/480 even launch. Good job ATI!


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## wahdangun (Feb 25, 2010)

wow, i'm really speechless, what the heck AMD doing


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## TVman (Feb 25, 2010)

i thought it would be like 10fps slower then 5850 but the numbers i was seeing were disappointing + it takes more juice then a 5850


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## Kenshai (Feb 25, 2010)

TVman said:


> i thought it would be like 10fps slower then 5850 but the numbers i was seeing were disappointing + it takes more juice then a 5850



Because 2 watts more on average is going to break the bank


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## TVman (Feb 25, 2010)

Kenshai said:


> Because 2 watts more on average is going to break the bank



im sorry but im not a rich guy like you


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## Kenshai (Feb 25, 2010)

TVman said:


> im sorry but im not a rich guy like you



Not even looking at it like that, I haven't updated my specs I sold my i7. Two watts really is miniscule, if you're looking at purchasing a card in this price range then the power consumption won't really matter too much.


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## Arrakis9 (Feb 25, 2010)

with a tiny overclock you can have 4890 with lower power consumption and DX11 ! sounds good to me, i set my self at a ~ $200 limit for graphics cards and this pans out quite nice, i think i found my next graphics card


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## dir_d (Feb 25, 2010)

Nice review but this card just sucks for the price


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## aj28 (Feb 25, 2010)

GT200 != 14004M
_(Unless... Fermi specs stealth release?)_


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## Imsochobo (Feb 25, 2010)

The price will drop fast.

atleast to 220.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 25, 2010)

Worse then I expected but I'm hopeful that the lack of clock binning will yield some decent results.

Sure I could get 1ghz+

How ever unless this is only 10-20 pounds more then 5770 this card will be a waste for me.

Would go for 5770 since they overclock like demons ha ha


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## 1Kurgan1 (Feb 25, 2010)

Looks like if you want cheap speed, 5770 is still the king, with the raised clocks it kills the head room, and the performance doesnt even seem that far ahead of the basic 5770 anyways.


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## sapetto (Feb 25, 2010)

AMD is just taking it easy after the 5870/5850.


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## mastrdrver (Feb 25, 2010)

W1zz, what benchmark do you use for FC2? I see at the beginning making mention about setting in game to highest, but do you use a custom playback, small ranch, etc? Thanks

I like the Asus card but not so much the price of the 5830 overall. I think it will hurt sales of it a little bit.


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## W1zzard (Feb 25, 2010)

i think ranch medium


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## theorw (Feb 25, 2010)

unless it goes like 180EUR and OC beyond 1000Core it will be a fail.
I am sticking with my 5770 and i ll put a 2nd next week!
It ll be much better.


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## Paintface (Feb 25, 2010)

looks like its not a gap filler for the 5770 - 5850 and my 4890 will last a long while longer.

Also unless its a good deal cheaper than the 5770 ill keep advising people to buy the 5770 with a custom cooler if they want a good price/quality card that is low on power usage and heat/noise


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## rodneyhchef (Feb 25, 2010)

Wow, this is very disappointing. Great review as always though Wizz!

5840 with 24ROPs anyone?


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## cbupdd (Feb 25, 2010)

Nice review Wizzard, as always. Mmm, compared to 5770, +65$ expensive, for only +7% performance. Performance really disappointing.. At least, it has software voltage control.


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## Fourstaff (Feb 25, 2010)

I thought the 5830 is going to be the new 5770, best bang for buck, but I am very dissapointed with this product, its not powerful enough to outstrip the 5770 by a huge margin yet still quite expensive. Perhaps, we need a 5840?


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## Initialised (Feb 25, 2010)

From leaked data I'd seen before I was expecting it to be nipping at the heals of the GTX285 rather than the 4890. Hopefully some overclocked cards can get there.


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## a_ump (Feb 25, 2010)

WOW.....WTF!!!!! how is this supposed to bridge the gap between the HD 5770 and 5850 when it only performs 3-8% better than the 5770 at respectable resolutions? dam like someone said, ATI crippled this thing, its like they chopped off RV870's legs and gave it a rusted wheel chair. 

I'm really failing to comprehend how with all better or matched specs of the HD 4890 it falls behind it so much, i figure the increased shader count would negate that 50mhz difference. Drivers? or is RV790 really that badass as we thought it was upon release. 

Also could they not have done say 20ROP's or something?


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## HalfAHertz (Feb 25, 2010)

To be honest I feel disappointing from the current Ati portfolio, minus the 5850 and 5870 cards. They are both overpriced and fail to deliver the performance they are aimed at. It looks to me like the entire line was just rushed to production with very little time spent on tweaking...I hope things get better with future revisions and driver releases and of course prices will fall too.

Still the 5000 series failed to continue the trend that was started with the 4000 series - revolutionizing the price/performance classification of modern high performance graphics cards and bringing excellent performance to a wider audience.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 25, 2010)

What are you talking about man, the original MSRP of the cards was actually very reasonable ( same prices as last gen cards) 

The the retailers setting the prices to insane amounts, as they know there's no other next gen cards out they can charge what they like.


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## jessicafae (Feb 25, 2010)

wow I think the 5830 shows how high the defect rate (and how bad the yields) are with the TSMC 40nm process.  They almost had to disable half of the chip to get the 5830 (30% of the shaders are disabled and 50% of the ROPs).  The 55nm 4830 only needed to disable 20% of the shaders (640/800) and 20% of the ROPs (32/40).

It just looks like the price/performance ratio of the 40nm parts is no where near what the 55nm process could deliver.  I am just really glad I bought my 4890 when I did.  Looking more and more like I will completely skip the 40nm generation. Lets hope the 28nm generation in 2011 is better.









RV870/cypress die image. The ROPs are at the bottom.
Compare to cartoon image shows how much die space the ROPs take up

ps: I don't know why no one has ever brought this up, but ATI never released an official die shot of cypress, and the leaked one (above) actually has 2x16x16x5 shaders (2560sp, note the 16 rows on each side of 4x4 blocks) not the 2x10x16x5 as in the official block diagram.  It is highly possible that even 5870 (1600sp) is a partially disabled cypress.


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## Delta6326 (Feb 25, 2010)

Dang that card sucks, im still wandering how can a card be so much slower than a 5850 and use more watts? it may not be by alot but something slower should use less watts, ima stay with my 2x 4850 for sometime. Great Review as always Wizz


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## PaulieG (Feb 25, 2010)

I actually think it's a good business move to keep a performance gap between the 5830 and 5870/5850. When you start producing gap cards that are too close to the high end, you end up crippling your higher end card sales. We might not like it as consumers, but it's smart.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Feb 25, 2010)

but for that price paulie?


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## PaulieG (Feb 25, 2010)

[I.R.A]_FBi said:


> but for that price paulie?



LOL. I missed the price. Yeah, that is a bit high. I think maybe $199 would be more resonable.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Feb 25, 2010)

i was waiting for this to come and drive 5850 prices down, now it seems as iif its going to do the opposite


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## KainXS (Feb 25, 2010)

I like the way it looks, i won't buy it but it looks nice.


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## johnnyfiive (Feb 25, 2010)

5770 with a nice a overclock is a much better value IMO. As for people who keep comparing it to a 4890, 5770's are equal with 4890's IMO. I really don't see any reason to compare it to a 4890 (either the 5770 or 5830) because the 4890 is EOL and if you *can* find one new its going to cost you $200. If you can find one used, great, but comparing the 5770/58xx it to last gen cards is irrelavent and the pro's on the 5770/58xx series cards far outweigh the 48xx series cards. Less power, DX11, etc., etc.

The 5830 should cost $199, $229 is too much. Just spend the extra $70 and get a 5850. For a sub $200 card, the 5770 is THE best card without a doubt. You can get a 5770 for $145 now. So for $300 you can have 5870 performance.


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## jessicafae (Feb 25, 2010)

johnnyfiive said:


> I really don't see any reason to compare it to a 4890 (either the 5770 or 5830) because the 4890 is EOL and if you *can* find one new its going to cost you $200...


I think the point is more that if someone already owns a 4890 or 4870 or 2x4850 then they need comparison to the 5770, 5830 in order to decide if it is worthwhile to upgrade/change. In this case there is not sufficient performance improvement to justify the change.  If one is moving from 46xx or 3xxx series, or building a new system, then I agree with your point. If I was building new, I would probably buy a 5770.


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## W1zzard (Feb 25, 2010)

actually providing data ftw


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## Kantastic (Feb 25, 2010)

Arrakis+9 said:


> with a tiny overclock you can have 4890 with lower power consumption and DX11 ! sounds good to me, i set my self at a ~ $200 limit for graphics cards and this pans out quite nice, i think i found my next graphics card



Well it should've been faster than a 4890 at stock with lower power consumption than a 5850 and DX11 for $200.


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## Polarman (Feb 25, 2010)

+1 for 4890.


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## zithe (Feb 25, 2010)

TVman said:


> im sorry but im not a rich guy like you



That won't change your bill by a quarter in a year's worth of 24/7 use.


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## TheMailMan78 (Feb 25, 2010)

Glad I got my 5850.


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## MKmods (Feb 25, 2010)

Imsochobo said:


> The price will drop fast.
> 
> atleast to 220.



This looks like a $199 card (the 5770 should be $149 and the 5850 should be $250)

I saw the price at Newegg for the power Color 5830 is $249 reg with $10 off

I wouldnt mind $239 but I would expect the card closer to the 5850 and less like a 5770.


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## DrunkenMafia (Feb 26, 2010)

so its only 5% faster than a 5770 and uses more powerand costs more.  I can match that with a very small oc on my 5770..  The 5830 needed to be at least 10% faster than it is to really fit in anywhere.  I know I wouldn't get one.


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## caamsa (Feb 26, 2010)

Is it possible that the drivers for this card are not maximizing its potential?


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## Pix (Feb 26, 2010)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Glad I got my 5850.



Agree totally.

Was a bit worried about getting a 5850 just days before this surfaced, but now it has, I'm happy with what I've got.

Also, I thought this would have 1280 shader processors, but it has 1120 compared to the 5850's 1440, plus it has half the ROPs. It's been gimped way too much.

But Paulie's right, they probably learned that they pretty much killed 4850 sales with the 4830 launch and don't want that happening again.

Either way, looks like I was right to not wait for this one.


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## marvelous211 (Feb 26, 2010)

Considering this card doesn't perform all that much faster than 5770 it should be more closer to 5770 prices than 5850.  $200 at best.

It doesn't make much sense how it performs compared to 4890 though.  It should perform much better than 4890 but it doesn't.  I think the problem lies in the ROP.  There are 2 rop clusters per memory controller total of 8 ROP.  ATI must have taken whole cluster of 4 rop out instead of equalizing taking 2 ROP per cluster.  So you get mixed results.  In shader heavy games though 5830 is faster than 4890 or 5770.


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## W1zzard (Feb 26, 2010)

marvelous211 said:


> Considering this card doesn't perform all that much faster than 5770 it should be more closer to 5770 prices than 5850.  $200 at best.
> 
> It doesn't make much sense how it performs compared to 4890 though.  It should perform much better than 4890 but it doesn't.  I think the problem lies in the ROP.  There are 2 rop clusters per memory controller total of 8 ROP.  ATI must have taken whole cluster of 4 rop out instead of equalizing taking 2 ROP per cluster.  So you get mixed results.  In shader heavy games though 5830 is faster than 4890 or 5770.



there are only 8 actual rops units, each being able to do 4 pixels per clock. you can't magically change them to do 2 pixels per clock (at least it doesnt make sense to add extra logic for such a feature). so you are correct that ati disabled 4 rop units instead of disabling the feature set of each rop unit leaving all of them enabled


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## mastrdrver (Feb 27, 2010)

marvelous211 said:


> Considering this card doesn't perform all that much faster than 5770 it should be more closer to 5770 prices than 5850.  $200 at best.
> 
> It doesn't make much sense how it performs compared to 4890 though.  It should perform much better than 4890 but it doesn't.  I think the problem lies in the ROP.  There are 2 rop clusters per memory controller total of 8 ROP.  ATI must have taken whole cluster of 4 rop out instead of equalizing taking 2 ROP per cluster.  So you get mixed results.  In shader heavy games though 5830 is faster than 4890 or 5770.



The problem lies in the texture units because of somethings that got moved there for DX11 from DX10.1. This is the reason the 5450 is slower than the 4350 given the same exact specs except for DX11.


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## trt740 (Feb 27, 2010)

so basically this is a 5770 with a 256 bit bus and 200 or so more shaders. It  seems to be a tiny bit over priced but still not a bad card when it's overclocked.


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## theorw (Feb 28, 2010)

trt740 said:


> so basically this is a 5770 with a 256 bit bus and 200 or so more shaders. It  seems to be a tiny bit over priced but still not a bad card when it's overclocked.



U can still grab a 5770 for 140EUR and OC it to 1000 core 99% and good chances of hitting 1030-1050 then 5830 @240EUR as it is sold here is POINTLESS!Grab a 2nd 5770 and u are king up to 1920-1080


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## overclocking101 (Mar 1, 2010)

well was gonna sell my 4890 and grab one but just bought another 4890 instead, lets hope I dont short this one out vlike I did my sapphire


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