Devil May Cry 4 (DirectX 10)

Standard 5830 Above

HIS 5830 Turbo Above

Settings: 1680x1050, Super High, 4xMSAA. Both cards put in high numbers here, scoring solid A's. The higher clocks on the HIS 5830 Turbo allowed it to achieve averages above 60 in all four scenarios compared to the standard clocked card.

Overclocking

Overclocking the HIS 5830 Turbo has been interesting to say the least. The Catalyst Control Center only provides for a modest overclock to the 5830, and since the HIS 5830 Turbo is already overclocked, you are halfway to the limits already. As I suspected, cranking the sliders to the max and hitting apply was no challenge whatsoever and made little difference to the temperatures. It did make a marked difference in many games though, which at the right settings jumped from borderline playable rates to playable rates.

I felt however that the card had more to give, so using AMD GPU clock tool, and a fan speed setting that was raised to 100% to ensure cooling wasn't an issue, I raised things even further. Our final overclock was 940MHz on the core, 1215MHz/4860MHz on the memory.

Returning to automatic fan control, the fan remained pretty quiet although certainly more audible than it had previously been. At the default HIS clocks, the fan under load won't be heard over your other system hardware unless (like me) you have a very quiet system; my water-cooled setup is pretty quiet but the HIS card never became an issue audibly. While overclocked, the fan noise did increase, but it wasn't an overly big difference and certainly tolerable. The temperatures at the standard HIS clocks were good too, with the card idling around the 43C mark, and not breaking a load temperature under an extended play period of 72C. Overclocked however, the maximum temperatures jumped to 76C under load. With the fan noise levels, these are highly acceptable numbers.

The boost we got in L4D2 put the card into the same sort of area as a pair of 5770's and raised the HIS 5830 Turbo's rates enough to keep the minimum frame rate dips to unnoticeable during play.

Final Words

The is a good card and it comes with a really nice package. You get a popular (and expensive) game along with the card, a nice quiet cooling setup and it comes with higher clocks than the defaults specified by AMD for the 5830.

In games, I admit I was expecting a little more from the card, but the higher clocks provided by certainly helped. What would also help I believe is a better driver. Much like the HIS 5670 card we reviewed last month, I've gotten this feeling that the drivers are not optimized with this card in mind, and I fully expect a driver update either this month or the next to improve things noticeably.

The hard part here is the price. AMD have priced the card with DirectX 11, ATI Stream, Eyefinity, Bitstreaming Audio and all the other benefits of the 5xxx series in mind, which has raised the price of a regular 5830 $30-40 higher than most folks believe is warranted by the performance. If it wasn't so large, the card would be pretty good as a high end HTPC item, but the price and size do mean most will go for a smaller and less expensive item for such purposes. So for many, Bitstreaming audio isn't going to be relevant, and those who do require Bitstreaming would be in the minority currently anyway. Again, Eyefinity support is great and makes a large difference to your gaming, but the folks with multi-monitor setups are in the minority. Such arguments can made for and against all the 5xxx series features.

If the hits the $250 area, in comparison with others on the market it would fit in well, and of course you do get the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game worth $60 and higher clock speeds out of the box. If you don't want the game, I'm sure you could sell it on eBay or to a friend for $40 all day long.

At time of writing, I don't have exact prices on the , but price aside, have created a really nice package here. I love the look of the cooling setup, it comes clocked higher than standard and overclocks further quite well, and it's quiet despite using more power than a 5850 under load. A very minor point, but I also like the gun metal appearance of the IO plate.

Overall the is a good card with a good package, but it's price, much like all the 5830's, will ultimately determine it's value to you. If the price is right, then you'll be happy with the .

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