Whether you wanna call it the affordable high end or the really supercharged midrange, ATI has decided that there is a space to be filled between its scorching 5850/70 cards and the only somewhat slower 5770 SKU. So let's all meet the $239 HD 5830, shall we? As is par for the Evergreen course, it's a 40nm DirectX 11 card, and while it matches the 2.15 billion transistor count of the 5850, the new contender makes do with only 16 ROPs and 1,120 stream processors. To compensate for that processing loss, the core clock is raised to 800MHz while maintaining the 1GHz memory speed of the elder 5850. If this sounds like the 5830 will basically be composed of 5850 chips that didn't quite make the high grade, good, because that's exactly what's happening. Internet reviewers have already had some time to play around with ATI's latest card, and if we can draw a consensus, it would be that while the performance is pretty much spot on between its nearest siblings, the price is that little bit too steep to make the HD 5830 an easy recommendation.
