While news has been rampart this week and the HD 5830 finally came to see the light of day samples were pretty quiet with everyone seeming to ease back into work mode after Chinese New Year. Saying that though it doesn’t mean we didn’t see anything, on the RAM front I saw 1600MHz 6GB kit from Crucial that’s getting thrown into a pile of other RAM that really needs to be tested this week.
The VGA front was really quiet as most companies didn’t have a chance to send models out in time to arrive before Friday and with Monday being a public holiday here in Perth, Australia it’s going to be a short week. Fortunately I’ll still work and organise hopefully a good chunk of stuff to come in and get March ready to rock and roll.
Two VGA samples came in this week and both where HD 5830s, the first was the reference ATI one which was nothing but a pain in the ass to get a hold off. While the guys at AMD and there PR team did a good job of sending it a week before the NDA the courier company missed the plane out of one state, then forgot to pick it up from the depot in my state and then finally on the day it was too be delivered, 42c (108 f) heat found the courier driver dehydrated and not being able to deliver my card the day before the NDA. Instead at 5pm I find out the only way I can get the card today was to drive 30 mins to the place which closed in an hour. Good times! At least I got it and the review was done on time albeit I was still writing at 4am in the morning. You can check out the review here.
The other HD 5830 was from Sapphire and thanks to ATI not letting companies release samples before CNY and then it taking a few days for it to get it out after CNY the sample didn’t arrive before the NDA date. That card is in the testbed at the moment though for another very cool article.
That’s it though, a bit of a quiet week but a busy month with 15 reviews from myself alone at TweakTown. Bring on March which should see the GTX 400 series, ATI EyeFinity6 card, more incarnations of the HD 5800 series and probably some unexpected surprises.