14 DAY TRIAL // Not too long ago, namely late into the first half of the ongoing month to be exact, Advanced Micro Devices was reported to be working on a new graphics adapter known as the Radeon HD 5830. Back then, the reports indicated that the new product would come out before the end of January, specifically on January 25th. More recent market rumors, on the other hand, now imply that this might not come to pass.
The Radeon HD 5830 is meant to cover the gap between the HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5850 GPU-based DirectX 11 graphics cards. Currently, the company's only offering for that price segment is the HD 4890, which lacks DirectX 11 features and is already facing strong competition from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 series. Product specifications of the soon-to-be-released card are still as unavailable as they were when reports of it first surfaced, but market rumors have started suggesting that the release might be postponed.
Digitimes reports that, according to its sources, AMD encountered a last-minute issue with the graphics adapter just when it was doing the final validation process. Until that time, the company was intent on officially launching the new product on January 25th. Now, however, it seems that the HD 5830 won't make it to the shelves before February.
The sources explained that the malfunction was related to the board's circuits and led to the manifestation of errors on the hardware maker's software testing platform. The report also states that the company “has already decided to retrieve related boards for further investigation.” Final estimates place the launch of the AMD Radeon HD 5830 sometime during the early parts of February 2010.
According to Digitimes, AMD refused to comment because its policy excluded responding to rumors or commenting on unreleased products. The company did, however, stress that the cards that were already on the market had no such problems.