Radeon HD5830 DirectX-11 Gaming Performance

Most of the discussion surrounding the Radeon HD5830 video card has been about its performance relative to its two nearest neighbors in the ATI lineup. People are falling over backwards trying to get a fix on its which side of the fence the 5830 belongs: closer to the HD5770, or nearer to the HD5850.

During Benchmark Reviews' recent evaluation of the Radeon HD 5830, we compared it to a wide variety of video cards, including several that are not compatible with Microsoft's DirectX-11 graphics API. Our graphics testing was designed to provide a level playing field for all the video cards, so we could compare apples-to-apples. It's the only way to make a fair comparison with older cards that readers may currently be using, and the current models from NVIDIA that are limited to DX10. Still, I was itching to see how the new crop of cards would fare with DX11 titles.

If we have the time, most reviewers will benchmark more test configurations than we report on, just so we can have the data available if we need it in the future. For instance, I wanted to be able to compare the Radeon HD 5830 to some lower mid-range cards in future reviews, so I also ran the test protocols that Benchmark Reviews has been using for more modestly priced graphics cards. That led me to think, about how the relative performance levels between two or three cards might shift around a bit, as some of the eye candy settings were cranked up and down.

The other motivator for running these additional tests was the fact that I really wanted to see how these upper-middle-class cards performed in the DirectX-11 environment. In my opinion, once the option to use DX11 is available, few people are going to want to turn it off, particularly after they see the results. It's just human nature; no one likes losing what they've already got. That's especially true with disruptive technologies like tessellation.

Please follow along as we take a deep dive into DirectX-11 performance for the ATI Radeon A-Team.

About the company: ATI

Over the course of AMD's four decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate - always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.

However, "technology for technology's sake" is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that's truly useful for customers - putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that "customers should come first, at every stage of a company's activities." We believe our company history bears that out.

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