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- Date:
- Thursday , February 25, 2010
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5830 Review
This is the video card gamers have been waiting for, an answer to the gap that exists between the Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5850 has been delivered. The Radeon HD 5830 launches today, and it offers price and performance right in-between these two video cards. If you are looking for a great value, this is it.
Aliens vs. Predator
We are using the full Steam version of Aliens vs. Predator. We have a full evaluation of this game in progress, so we won’t cover that here. We are doing today’s testing in this game with all three video cards with the full retail game, and running it in DX11 mode. In the game we can toggle Tessellation and the advanced Shadows in DX11. Under the DX11 options we can also enable 2X or 4X antialiasing. The other in-game settings are Texture Quality, Shadow Complexity, Ambient Occlusion, Motion Blur and Anisotropic Filtering, which were all at their highest levels for testing.
In this evaluation we are using the Predator Mission, Jungle level for testing. Our full evaluation in progress will be using a different level as we have progressed farther in the game from when this evaluation was started. Look for all the video cards below to also be included in our full gameplay performance and IQ look at Aliens vs. Predator.
This game ran better than I thought it would, especially with all the DX11 settings enabled. The Radeon HD 5850 was the fastest video card here, and allowed us to run at 1920x1200 with 4X AA and all DX11 options enabled at their highest values. This provided a very enjoyable gameplay experience. We tried 2560x1600, but we would have had to play with AA disabled, and even then the framerate was on the line of being playable in some areas.
The Radeon HD 5830 did remarkably well, and we only had to drop down to 2X AA at 1920x1200 with all the same DX11 options enabled at their highest values. 2560x1600 was out of the question with the Radeon HD 5830 with all the DX11 options enabled, but 1920x1200 was clearly its sweet spot with 2X AA to boot.
The Radeon HD 5770 was quite a bit slower, and we had to drop it down to 1680x1050. At 1680x1050 we were able to play with all the DX11 options enabled, and 2X AA, but we could not play with all the DX11 options enabled at 1920x1200.
It seems the Radeon HD 5830 did not incur a huge penalty compared to the Radeon HD 5850, while it did offer a substantial improvement over the Radeon HD 5770.
Apples-to-Apples
In this apples-to-apples test we are setting the game at 1920x1200 in DX11 with all DX11 options at their highest values, and 2X AA.
