Presently, there is a substantial price and performance gap between ATI's HD 5850 and HD 5770 which was filled for a short time by the HD 4890. ATI has now decided to release a card that effectively bridges the space between these two cards with the aptly-named HD 5830 1GB. In this review we look at the Sapphire version of a card that could prove to be a new price / performance leader in the GPU market.

Today we have with us the ASUS EAH 5830 DirectCu 1024 MB, a premium non-reference implementation of the Radeon HD 5830. The way its cooler is designed, and going by ASUS' choice of components, the EAH 5830 DirectCu is catered to the value performance enthusiast who can squeeze the last ounce of performance out of it by overclocking.

While ATI have clearly cemented the series into our minds ranging from the office orientated HD 5400 series to the dual GPU wielding HD 5900 series, it's clear that there's some models left out. You have to wonder if a HD 5650 is coming along with other models like the HD 5550.

What was clear over the past few months was the lack of a model to sit between the HD 5770 and HD 5850 in terms of price. The jump from the HD 5770 and HD 5850 in terms of performance was also quite large. The HD 5830 was rumored and after some delays the model is finally born.

Today we get to see the final (for now) piece of the puzzle in the Radeon 5000 range, the 5830. We will be running the card through a selection of real world gaming tests as well as GPU computing tasks and HD playback to find out how it compares to the 5770, 5850 and GTX 275.

Here we are, barely two weeks removed from the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5570, and we find ourselves in the now familiar position of announcing yet another Radeon HD 5000 series card. With the breakneck pace (relatively speaking) of Radeon HD 5000 series releases over the past 5 or 6 months, it would be easy to dismiss today's launch of the Radeon HD 5830 as a move by AMD to simply use more marginal Cypress GPUs, thus increasing effective yields, while at the same time sticking it to NVIDIA yet again. But a quick look at the company's 5000-series product stack reveals the other major reason...

AMD has been spitting out new graphics cards like crazy since launching the Radeon HD 5000 series five months ago. With today's release that translates into almost two new graphics cards each month.

Looking at the budget and mid-range segments you'll notice that there is no more than $40 separating each card. So why the big gap between the Radeon HD 5770 and 5850? As it turns out AMD has been planning to plug this hole all along with yet another offering. The Radeon HD 5830 is expected to come in at somewhere around $250, ~15% cheaper than the 5850.

Appearance and form factors aside, what we are most excited about is having a new Radeon HD 5800 product at more affordable price tag, that is, as long as AMD has kept the value proposition and performance balance as good as it sounds on paper. Let's find out.

In the first half of these benchmarks, the HD 5830 was really knocking off our socks -- seeing it beat out the GTX 285 a few times was most impressive. By the end of the benchmarks though, things balanced out: like much of the HD 5000 series, the HD 5830 performs admirably for its price point, but does not deliver any new, explosive surprises.

Ever since the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD5770, PC gamers and enthusiasts have been looking at the wide gap between the HD5770 and the HD5850 and knew that it would only be a matter of time before ATI plugged the hole in their product line. ATI is taking a slightly different approach with the Radeon HD5830 video card; selling only the ASIC chips to their Add-In-Board (AIB) partners. In this article Benchmark Reviews is going to demonstrate a prototype ATI Radeon HD 5830 video card, and our benchmark tests are going to put an end to the rumors about the specifications and graphical performance of this highly anticipated GPU.