# MSI HD 5830 Twin Frozr II



## W1zzard (Apr 9, 2010)

MSI's HD 5830 Twin Frozr II uses a shiny metal heatsink that comes with two fans to keep the card cool. In our testing we see nice overclocking potential of around 20% which can easily bring the card to new performance levels.

*Show full review*


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## Sasqui (Apr 9, 2010)

Wow, your a busy person, playing SLI with two 480's and publishnig a review!

What is the cost of a reference cooler design 5830?  If they get down to the $200-$250 range, a superb card for the buck.

Too bad about MSI AB doesn't work with it (at the moment).


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## DOM (Apr 9, 2010)

Sasqui said:


> Wow, your a busy person, playing SLI with two 480's and publishnig a review!
> 
> What is the cost of a reference cooler design 5830?  If they get down to the $200-$250 range, a superb card for the buck.
> 
> Too bad about MSI AB doesn't work with it (at the moment).



i seen ppl on newegg saying it doesnt work on the 5850 ver. it wont go past  1.15v without crashing the system :shadedshu


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## TheLaughingMan (Apr 9, 2010)

More middle child syndrome to come when *Insert Brand Name here* tries their hand at make the HD 5830 not pointless.  Will they dabble at declining the dastardly dubious dollar amount?  Will they overclock the obvious opening for over achievement with this overt GPU?

Join us next time and find out!  Same W1z time.  Same W1z channel!


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## HalfAHertz (Apr 9, 2010)

The 5830 would have been so much better with 1280 sps enabled...there's such symmetry in that number. Plus you can see that half the ROPS are hurting it. It does much better without AA enabled.


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## Polarman (Apr 9, 2010)

The 5830 in general is not reaaly that great.


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## Semi-Lobster (Apr 10, 2010)

I'm surprised to see the Volt modding being so wonky on it, MSI are usually pretty good for this sort of thing


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## Solaris17 (Apr 10, 2010)

although its close to a 4890 I still want to get rid of mine and get 2x5830's idk for some reason I just really like these cards.


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## TheLaughingMan (Apr 10, 2010)

Solaris17 said:


> although its close to a 4890 I still want to get rid of mine and get 2x5830's idk for some reason I just really like these cards.



Like your profile pic.  What?


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## Solaris17 (Apr 10, 2010)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Like your profile pic.  What?



Well I went rom quad SLI to one 4890. 5830 seems to be a nice proce point for the performance and not having more than 1 GPU is driving me insane.


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## a_ump (Apr 10, 2010)

Yea ROP's is definitely what's hurting the HD 5830, if it had say 20-24ROPs it'd be doing much better, and its performance would be more inline with its price which is closer to the HD 5850's price yet the HD 5830's performance is much closer to the HD 5770's.


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## Zubasa (Apr 10, 2010)

The bummer for the 5830 is that ATi set the clock-speed at 800Mhz.
If they make it 850Mhz core then there will be no contest in-terms of performance.
Some half-ass atempt to save power or just terribad yields?


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## TheLaughingMan (Apr 10, 2010)

Solaris17 said:


> Well I went rom quad SLI to one 4890. 5830 seems to be a nice proce point for the performance and not having more than 1 GPU is driving me insane.



But as stated in the review.  For an extra $20 bucks you can get a 30% boost in performance from the 5850.  And your HD 4890 out performs the 5830, but cost less money.

This thing needs to lose some price weight, or bring up the performance with high clock speed as stated above.

I still with my cartoonish comment above as this creation should not be taken seriously in its current form.


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## Flanker (Apr 10, 2010)

ew, that cooler basically screams under load, the price points doesn't help either


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## Solaris17 (Apr 10, 2010)

TheLaughingMan said:


> But as stated in the review.  For an extra $20 bucks you can get a 30% boost in performance from the 5850.  And your HD 4890 out performs the 5830, but cost less money.
> 
> This thing needs to lose some price weight, or bring up the performance with high clock speed as stated above.
> 
> I still with my cartoonish comment above as this creation should not be taken seriously in its current form.



my 4890 would not out perform this. And I didn't say I wanted this exact card. Its expensive for its performance. I like the 5830 series though. I would of course get one with voltage control. Then I would get 2. I have 0 intrest in running a single 5850 I also have 0 intrest and buying a 5830 model that is only $20 cheaper. I stand by what I said I want to go dual card as cheap as possible right now and get my foot in the new tech door. The 5770 just isnt my thing I dont like that card. However 2 5830's would perform well Their not too expensive and would be the perfect stop gap until later this year when I spring for a 5970 which will later be joined by another 5970, though I may just get both at the same time.


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## mdsx1950 (Apr 10, 2010)

The card looks nice. And great idle temps. Thanks for the review


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## TheLaughingMan (Apr 10, 2010)

Solaris17 said:


> my 4890 would not out perform this. And I didn't say I wanted this exact card. Its expensive for its performance. I like the 5830 series though. I would of course get one with voltage control. Then I would get 2. I have 0 intrest in running a single 5850 I also have 0 intrest and buying a 5830 model that is only $20 cheaper. I stand by what I said I want to go dual card as cheap as possible right now and get my foot in the new tech door. The 5770 just isnt my thing I dont like that card. However 2 5830's would perform well Their not too expensive and would be the perfect stop gap until later this year when I spring for a 5970 which will later be joined by another 5970, though I may just get both at the same time.



Not to start anything, but I was not implying you get only 1 5850, nor did I mean to imply you get this card; however, simple fact is your 4890 does out perform the 5830 buy a few percentage points.  Link below.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_5830_Twin_Frozr_II/29.html

And it is not just this one.  All of them are $250ish in price and that is $30 too much IMO.

I am not knocking you for liking the card, I liked it as well but it disappointed me.  I also don't think it is a smart thing to buy 2 graphics cards that you have already planned to replace in a few months with a product you can get now.  For the price of 2 of these you can just get the first 5970 which will be about the same performance and just get the other later this year.


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## Crazyhorse (Apr 10, 2010)

Its alot more fun having a 5870 Bios on it. Unfortunately it doesn't change the rops or shader units. However its quiet fun though it pumped up the 3DMark Vantage Score Xtreme by 1000 points when set to stock HD 5830 speeds which is amazing. I m not sure what does it but it does. 
I have 2 of these cards 1 will do it just fine the other one will flash too but will blank out. However I m testing 900mhz core /1200mhz Bios right now and scored with a test system of a B55 x4 3.2ghz 2gb ram old 160gb HD an easy P13178 Performance Score not Xtreme can't test it right now because of the limited monitor size on the test setup.

I m curious though, why did the rops or shader units not change when using the 5870 bios ?


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## TheLaughingMan (Apr 11, 2010)

Crazyhorse said:


> Its alot more fun having a 5870 Bios on it. Unfortunately it doesn't change the rops or shader units. However its quiet fun though it pumped up the 3DMark Vantage Score Xtreme by 1000 points when set to stock HD 5830 speeds which is amazing. I m not sure what does it but it does.
> I have 2 of these cards 1 will do it just fine the other one will flash too but will blank out. However I m testing 900mhz core /1200mhz Bios right now and scored with a test system of a B55 x4 3.2ghz 2gb ram old 160gb HD an easy P13178 Performance Score not Xtreme can't test it right now because of the limited monitor size on the test setup.
> 
> I m curious though, why did the rops or shader units not change when using the 5870 bios ?



It is not a software limitation.  Those ROPS/shader sectors are physically disabled.  Usually laser cut the connections for those blocks in production.  There is no way to undo that.


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## chaotic_uk (Apr 12, 2010)

so if it uses less power why in the charts under load use 12w more than the stock card ? , thats more is it not ?


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## btarunr (Apr 12, 2010)

chaotic_uk said:


> so if it uses less power why in the charts under load use 12w more than the stock card ? , thats more is it not ?



Not, because the card isn't idling when running the benchmarks.


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## chaotic_uk (Apr 12, 2010)

btarunr said:


> Not, because the card isn't idling when running the benchmarks.



so it should say low power draw when idle , only time i see it using less power is at idle and while playing blu-ray . all other times it uses more


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## Crazyhorse (Apr 14, 2010)

TheLaughingMan said:


> It is not a software limitation.  Those ROPS/shader sectors are physically disabled.  Usually laser cut the connections for those blocks in production.  There is no way to undo that.



I see your point and then i don't. I took the cooler of cleared the thermal grease up and compared the chip with a regular chip of a 5870. Looks exactly the same, no laser cuts of any kind I could see.

If the chip was done this way on purpose without any chance of messing with it, why in the world would it need to be on a 5870 PCB and not on a 5850 or even a new one. There has to be some sort of magic to get something going. I just refuse to believe that is it. The sad thing is you can't find anything about those cards useful anyway on any message board. It seems people are so shocked by the price preformance that they don't even try.

There used to be smart people on forums who figured stuff out like that came up with modified bioses ect... 
I really wonder what is going on with that card. There might be nothing but a chip to chip comparison shows the exact same chips layout and chip then on a 5870 without any cuts. I might be chasing a ghost here but you never know until you have used all your options.


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## W1zzard (Apr 14, 2010)

Crazyhorse said:


> I see your point and then i don't. I took the cooler of cleared the thermal grease up and compared the chip with a regular chip of a 5870. Looks exactly the same, no laser cuts of any kind I could see.
> 
> If the chip was done this way on purpose without any chance of messing with it, why in the world would it need to be on a 5870 PCB and not on a 5850 or even a new one. There has to be some sort of magic to get something going. I just refuse to believe that is it. The sad thing is you can't find anything about those cards useful anyway on any message board. It seems people are so shocked by the price preformance that they don't even try.
> 
> ...



did you look at the bottom of the gpu before you came up with your "magic" idea?

also read up on electrically programmable fuses


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