Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 Extreme

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 Extreme

This morning Sapphire Technology is announcing a new Radeon graphics card. It's not though part of the Radeon HD 6000 series that has recently seen the launch of the Radeon HD 6790 or even the Radeon HD 6450, but rather it's a Cypress-based part. Yes, as in the Radeon HD 5800 series. This new graphics card is the Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 Extreme and it has designed to deliver the best performance for the ~$120 USD price point. Here is our look at this new graphics card with accompanying Linux benchmarks.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15897

[curaga]

Hmm, GTX 559?

[Tgui]

I can't believe the power requirements of todays video cards, its insane!

[Kano]

An oss driver comparision would be also cool. I found out that one xorg.conf option extremely improves ati oss driver performance for games: SwapbuffersWait - set it to false and you will see what i mean. For nouveau another tuning is required as it defaults to run the cards at boot clocks. Best ask the devs how to switch it, it is a tiny bit complicated but the result is worth the effort.

[MùPùF]

An oss driver comparision would be also cool. I found out that one xorg.conf option extremely improves ati oss driver performance for games: SwapbuffersWait - set it to false and you will see what i mean. For nouveau another tuning is required as it defaults to run the cards at boot clocks. Best ask the devs how to switch it, it is a tiny bit complicated but the result is worth the effort.

have fun with your extra fps

[deanjo]

An oss driver comparision would be also cool. I found out that one xorg.conf

So much for the "you don't need a xorg.conf anymore" that gets tossed around in the ml/forums that some X / kernel devs like to throw around.

[MùPùF]

So much for the "you don't need a xorg.conf anymore" that gets tossed around in the ml/forums that some X / kernel devs like to throw around.

The oss drivers are tuned for stability, not performance. This is true that a tool should be created to tweak the xorg/mesa options for stability/performance/visual fidelity. Just like amd's control center and nVidia's nvidia-settings

[PsynoKhi0]

Interesting card for the price point.
Given than it's also roughly 20% more expensive than the 5770, seems the HD5k-series scale pretty well here performance wise (Can't really say the same about the 6870 though). Personally I think I'd still go for the 5770 because of the single 6-pin PCI-E.

Side note, given the special cooler, temperature levels would have been interesting. (Acoustic levels too, but that would need extra equipment).

[pingufunkybeat]

So much for the "you don't need a xorg.conf anymore" that gets tossed around in the ml/forums that some X / kernel devs like to throw around.

You don't need it if you are happy with the default settings. That's all that anyone has ever claimed

It's not like your system won't boot if you don't provide a correct xorg.conf, as is the case with some user-friendly blobs.

It's also not like you have to block driver updates so they don't bork your computer as is the case with some user-friendly blobs

[deanjo]

You don't need it if you are happy with the default settings. That's all that anyone has ever claimed

Actually GKH was the one that I had in mind with a recent GoC project SaX3. He was saying it was no longer needed to have such xorg.conf helper apps.

It's not like your system won't boot if you don't provide a correct xorg.conf, as is the case with some user-friendly blobs.

* AMD blobs. Nvidia blobs haven't needed xorg.confs for a long time now for basic usage.

It's also not like you have to block driver updates so they don't bork your computer as is the case with some user-friendly blobs

Dkms handles this, as do many distros update their blob packages to accommodate the update. Not a big issue.