Between the HD5850 and HD5770, however, there exists a large gap both in terms of performance and price in ATI's lineup. Quite simply, the Radeon HD5830 is designed to fill that gap. The catch here, though, is the 5830 isn't really a "new" card, not at least in the traditional sense. Instead, ATI has sort of "cheated" here, and the 5830 is essentially a neutered 5870 that couldn't pass regular binning criteria. As a result, the 5830 looks very much like a 5870, and is in fact the same size as well. So we have a card that is bigger than 5850 but can't match its performance. Not exactly awe-inspiring to start things off, but the price is more affordable on the flipside.

PowerColor has taken the reference 5830, slapped on a custom heatsink, given it a mild factory overclock and a corresponding PCS+ moniker, and offered it to consumers for $250 USD, about $20 less than MSI and Sapphire's offerings. In fact, it's currently the only 5830 on the market with a factory overclock. Whether the PCS+ 5830 is a good value card in the context of ATI's entire lineup remains to be seen.

Let's take the PowerColor PCS+ 5830 1GB for a spin and see how it stacks up against the competition.

Thanks to PowerColor for providing the review sample.

PowerColor, established by Tul Corporation in 1997, is a graphics industry leading brand name now and well known for its outstanding performance and innovative technology. As a leading provider of graphics card, PowerColor offers powerful, reliable and cost-effective solutions to customers worldwide. PowerColor graphics cards deliver every-last-drop of super-charged performance from ATI's most advanced visual processing units (VPU). Running a PowerColor graphics card, today's gamers are able to unleash the 3D graphics performance of their favorite game.