The HD 5830 Reference Card – the one you’ll never see
As I mentioned on the previous page, the Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards will not be sold in the form you are going to see here – the referenced design from AMD was built for internal testing and to give media the ability to test the product before the board partners designs were finalized. The reference clocks should be the same as the first batch of retail-ready GPUs available so performance will match up pretty well. I have to say I am disappointed by the move because I like the cooler and color design on the HD 5800-series of cards quite a bit.
If this board looks familiar – it should. It is the same size and weight of the first batch of HD 5870 cards we ever tested.
The connection configuration on these cards is still impressive: a pair of dual-link DVI ports, one HDMI and a DisplayPort option as well. Up to three monitors can be run off of this single graphics card as long as one of them is using the DisplayPort connection.
For power, it makes sense the HD 5830 would require a pair of 6-pin PCIe connectors since it has a maximum power draw over that of the HD 5850.
One of these is an HD 5870, the other an HD 5830. Since YOUR HD 5830 will never look like this it won’t matter. Why did I include this photo then? Good question.
The Cypress GPU is still pretty big though we are expecting the upcoming NVIDIA DX11 part to be even bigger. Because the GPU is the same for the HD 5830 as for the HD 5870 and HD 5850, it has the same raw materials cost to AMD. However, with binning and separating of GPUs based on performance characteristics, AMD is likely saving some money by introducing the HD 5830 card.
Finally, here are a couple of promotional shots from AMD board partner options that should be for sale now or very soon. You can see that both Gigabyte and Sapphire have very different cooler options compared to each other and compared to the reference design.
This card should do a fine
This card should do a fine job of representing the 5830’s performance, but noise levels, GPU temperatures, and even power consumption may vary on the actual products. That hasn’t stopped AMD from offering power consumption estimates of 125W at peak and 25W when idle, though.