Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 & HD 5830 Xtreme Review - PAGE 1

When AMD first introduced their Cypress graphics processor it was a ground breaking event, being the first on the market to support Microsoft DirectX 11 while also having multiple monitor support via Eyefinity. These features, along with the fact that it was the fastest GPU available for some time, really made products such as the Radeon HD 5870, HD 5850 and later HD 5830 stand out. Even in today’s market, with both AMD and Nvidia moving onto their second generation DX 11 architecture, the Cyrpess GPU still offers an excellent performance and features. This is why Sapphire has brought back the 5850 and HD 5830 graphics cards in their latest Xtreme series.

The two cards in the new Xtreme series we're looking at today are the HD 5850 and HD 5830 Xtreme. Both of the new models use the reference specifications for their respective GPUs. This gives the HD 5850 Xtreme a total of 1440 Stream Processors, 72 Texture Units, 32 ROPs and a GPU clock speed of 725MHz. The HD 5830 is the little brother in the Cypress family, and the HD 5830 Xtreme comes with 1120 Stream processors, 56 texture units and 16 ROPs and has a GPU clock speed of 800MHz. In addition, both the HD 5850 and HD 5830 Xtreme include a 1GB GDDR5 frame buffer that runs on a 256-bit interface.

While the specifications for the Xtreme series graphics cards fall in line with reference models, the PCB and thermal solutions are a custom design. This gives each model a very robust cooling solution that is the same as those found on Sapphire’s current 6000 series graphic products. The use of a custom heatsink should lower both the overall acoustic and thermal levels. This will allow the Xtreme series graphics cards to run at their optimal performance levels, while maintaining a lower sound level than the reference design.

The HD 5850 and HD 5830 Xtreme have a MSRP of $149 and $129 respectively. This positions them at a very competitive value segment for their respective price, and could ultimately make them the best available solution under $150.