HIS 5830 Turbo
With an uprated cooling setup, higher clock speeds and a free game, the HIS 5830 Turbo hopes to provide more value for money with extra performance and additional software.
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I think it’s safe to say that the 5830 has been received with mixed opinions from both reviewers and end users. However, for the most part, this is based on the first drivers available for the card as well as on the default reference cards. Since AMD are leaving it up to the vendors to create their own mix with the 5830 GPU, we are now starting to see various different cards appear with the 5830 at their heart. Many of these vendors, including today’s review supplier, have decided to increase the clock speeds of the core and memory for their respective design of 5830 card, perhaps in the hopes to alleviating some of the disappointment folks had when they realized that the 5830 doesn’t quite perform as well as hoped at the price point it’s been released at it. AMD have since managed to score a deal where by you can now get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with the cards, so considering that many feel the 5830 is over priced, if you’re looking to get one, it’s going to be especially important to look at the extras you’re getting. have sent over their Platinum package , supplied with extra software, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (a $60 game) and it comes pre-overclocked above the recommended AMD specs. The also sports their iCooler cooling setup which we really liked on the 4xxx cards we reviewed a while back, so let’s open the box shall we? |
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Specifications
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Model Name
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HIS HD 5830 iCooler V Turbo 1GB (256bit) GDDR5 PCIe (DirectX 11/ Eyefinity) (Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 2 Game Coupon Inside) |
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Chipset
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Radeon HD 5830 PCIe Series |
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Memory Size
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1024MB GDDR5 |
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Pixel Pipelines
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1120 stream processing units* (Unified) |
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Vertex Engines
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1120 stream processing units* (Unified) |
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Manu. Process
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40nm |
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Memory Type
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GDDR5 |
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RAMDAC
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400MHz |
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Engine CLK
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840MHz |
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Memory CLK
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4.4GBPs / 4400MHz |
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Memory Interface
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256bit |
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Bus Interface
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PCI Express x16 |
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Max. Resolution
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3x 2560*1600 (Dual dual-link) |
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GPU Features
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Ports
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1x DVI, 1x (Native) HDMI, 1x VGA |
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The box for the HIS 5830 Turbo is a little different proportionately than we’ve come to expect from HIS in the past, however I have to say that I personally think it’s the best packaging to date. It’s quite a heavy package and the box is both thinner and deeper. As is usual for HIS, the box has all the pertinent information on the rear and highlighted information on the front.
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Inside we find a gray cardboard box which contains the card and package contents. The extras are all kept loose on a tray with the card itself securely packed beneath. All the packaging and support is cardboard, making it all recyclable.
Included with the HIS 5830 Turbo is a CrossfireX bridge, two 2x Molex to 1x PCIe 6 pin adapters, a DVI to VGA adapter, a redeemable voucher for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (via Steam) and a small folder which holds the Driver disk, extra software and media (3D Bumptop, HIS Wallpapers) and an HIS case badge. We’ve seen larger packages but overall there is quite a bit here.
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The card itself sports the big black iCooler V cooling setup, which uses a shrouded heat-pipe cooling setup with a single fan. As this is the CoD:MW2 edition platinum package, HIS have decorated the cooling shroud with an appropriate game sticker.
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The fan for the cooling is a blue translucent one and sits right above the GPU itself. The back edge of the cooling shroud sports these raked grills to give the card a very sporty impression; it looks pretty good overall I think.
Whilst we are at the rear end of the card, let’s check out the power headers. Two 6 pin PCIe power connectors are needed, so make sure you have at least a 500w (recommended 600w) power supply as the 5830 is a little juicy under load.
Turning the card around we can see the IO layout. Aside from the exhaust grill, we also have two DVI-I outputs, a native HDMI output and a DisplayPort output. You’ll also notice that HIS have gone with a gun metal look for the IO plate itself which gives this part of the card a high end audio look to it, something we’ve seen on HIS cards in the past and makes a welcome return here.
The rear of the card is quite uneventful, although you can see the cross brace used to hold the cooler on the GPU, complete in matching gun metal coloring. You’ll also note that HIS have gone with their signature blue PCB and this image also shows quite well how big the card is.
Testing
Test Setup: Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 @ 3.20GHz, 4GB of OCZ PC2-6400 Ram @ 960MHz, Asus Blitz Formula, Silicon Power M10 32GB + WD640AAKS, Asetek Waterchill Watercooling, Hyper Type M 730w PSU. All latest drivers as of March 2010 and the OS is Windows 7 64bit.
For comparison, we are testing against a default clocked 5830 card.
Software
Left 4 Dead 2 – Recording a custom demo on the Dead Center, Hotel level (inside in the inferno), we used FRAPS to record frame rates as we played back the demo on all cards at same settings.
Assassin’s Creed 2 – The second of our DirectX 9 games, we tested by climbing a tower repeatedly in the Venice, San Polo – Rialto Bridge area and taking a leap of faith to the hay below. Fraps was used to record frame-rates and the cards were set to the highest possible for each card.
Batman Arkham Asylum – We used a combination of the in game benchmark and FRAPS to gather our numbers for this game. All cards were set to the highest possible settings for that card.
Crysis Warhead – We used the Framebuffer benchmark tool to run through the Ambush demo and recorded the results with FRAPS. Settings for each card were set to highest possible for that card.
Colin McRae’s DiRT2 – DiRT2 has some very good looking visuals and provides us with our first DirectX 11 test. We used FRAPS with the games inbuilt benchmark to test a quick run around a London track.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat Benchmark – Our second DX11 test uses a combination of Fraps and the Ray portion of the benchmark. Cards were set to highest possible for each card
Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark – DMC4′s benchmark provides a nice way of testing that anyone can do. Results are all from the benchmark itself, and include average frame rates as well as 4 graphs for each level tested. Settings for all cards were the same.
Left 4 Dead 2 (DirectX 9)
Settings: 1680×1050, Very High, 4xMSAA, 16x Anisotropic Filtering. Left 4 Dead 2, according to the graphs doesn’t show much of a difference between the two cards, but despite the numbers shown here, it is a game I play near daily and there IS a difference. The extra boost from the HIS cards higher clocks does make a difference when you get rushed. It’s slight, yes, but it’s enough.
Assassin’s Creed 2 (DirectX 9)
Settings: 1680×1050, Highest Available in options, 2xMSAA. Assassin’s Creed 2 is a new test for us, and while the engine at first glance hasn’t changed overly much to the eye, there is certainly a lot more going on on-screen than the previous game. Both cards here performed identically, both looking at the numbers and during subjective playing.
Batman: Arkham Asylum (DirectX 9)
Settings: 1680×1050, Highest, 2xAA (Not MSAA, Box AA, Forced in Drivers). Here the HIS card takes a more definitive step ahead, both on the graph and in average frame rates. During game play, the difference is noticeable too, with fewer dips in frame rate to levels that become distracting.
Crysis: Warhead (DirectX 10)
Settings: 1680×1050, Enthusiast, 0xMSAA. Crysis just doesn’t like ATI cards, compared to Nvidia cards. The numbers we have here at these settings are borderline unplayable, which is pretty much par the course for Crysis in the red camp. Still, at Enthusiast levels, that leaves plenty of headroom for tweaking, and a drop to Gamer levels would net you a boost in frame rates that are almost the same again. These numbers here I expected to be higher, as Crysis does traditionally like cards with higher memory bandwidth, and since the 5830 sports a 256bit bus I was hoping it might take a significant step ahead of the 5770, especially with the higher clocks the HIS card has.
Colin McRae DiRT 2 (DirectX 11)
Settings: 1680×1050, Highest/Ultra, 4xMSAA. DiRT2 runs really well on the HIS 5830 Turbo. The graph shows a line that indicates a very similar experience on both cards but like Left 4 Dead 2, play the game for a while and you will notice a difference. The HIS 5830 Turbo does better when it comes to the lowest frame rates, and it’s these dips that prove distracting when playing. It’s still not a perfect experience, but it is a better one with the HIS card none the less.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat Benchmark (DirectX 11)
Settings: 1680×1050, Extreme Levels, Tessellation On, No MSAA. This benchmark runs in 4 graphical levels, and we used the last test, the Rays test, for our purposes. Here the extra boost from the HIS 5830 Turbo didn’t make a huge impact to the numbers, but it was a higher average none the less.
Devil May Cry 4 (DirectX 10)
Standard 5830 Above
HIS 5830 Turbo Above
Settings: 1680×1050, 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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