MSI R5830 Twin Frozr II review - Final Words & Conclusion

The Verdict

There's no confusion about what we already thought of the Radeon HD 5830. We feel it's restricted by AMD one notch too much and the Twin FroZR II edition certainly will not change that fact when you look at the product in it's baseline configuration. Bringing the 5830 down to seven shader clusters with a total of 1120 shader processors was what I feel to be one shader cluster, or proverbially speaking, one notch too little compared to the R5850. AMD also cut the accumulated color ROP engines in half, that's sixteen coming from thirty-two. These two details combined slow down overall performance opposed to the fastest products quite significantly.

Also a bit of a bummer is that ATI requires MSI to clock this product at reference frequencies. A bit of a shame really as the overclock potential with a card like the Twin FroZR II is really enormous and can make a pretty significant difference. We took the product from 800 MHz towards 928 MHz real fast, and the memory from 4000 MHz towards 4800 MHz. That's an instant 15% performance increase, which is a lot in the competitive graphics arena alright.

So while we think that the R5830 in general was 'castrated' a little too much by ATI, we do feel that MSI certainly delivered a hugely interesting product. Aesthetically it's the most beautiful 5830 you'll find on the market, period. Next to that we see the high-quality component design being used on the PCB, that increases overclock potential but also lifespan. Great stuff. MSI tops it off with the Twin Frozr II cooler. Though that cooler looks brilliant we do feel that performance wise it does not add much over the reference cooler. It's also roughly as noisy as the reference cooler and unfortunately the design dumps it's residual heat inside the PC and is not exhausting it outside the PC. We'll keep repeating this MSI, it's not all about the looks. This cooler could be improved quite a bit on many levels.

That's also really the only quirk we can think off. The R5830 Twin FroZR II edition graphics card is the best in it's class. The overclock potential increases due to design, and the AfterBurner overclock software with voltage regulation. The extra performance does the 5830 good. Next to that, it has to be the coolest looking R5830 available on the market.

Whether or not the 5830 with it's baseline performance is a product for you remains only a question you can answer yourself, but in the 5830 range, we can wholeheartedly recommend this product being one of the alpha dogs of 5830 cards currently in this market.

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