I wasn’t sure it was going to happen before Chinese New Year, and to be honest it was going to be a real push but the good news is that NDA paperwork is coming through for the HD 5830 and samples are shipping out Friday which will be just in time.

Originally we heard a date that was going to fall in the middle of CNY, and while we could still launch at that date the official date for the model will be the week of the 22nd with reviews most likely being published around the 25th / 26th of the month as I previously speculated.

The good news is that the model is going to be seen before the GTX 400 series and should really complete the whole ATI line up from top to bottom with the HD 5830 really.

As for the specifications Fudzilla has said:

The card is based on AMD’s Cypress LE core, used in HD 5850 cards, but it features fewer shaders, 1280 instead of 1440 on the HD 5850. It also has 60 texture units compared to 72 on the HD 5850. All in all it doesn’t sound like AMD crippled it too much and we can assume it will still pack quite a punch. The GPU clock is apparently set at 750MHz, which is 25MHz faster than the reference HD 5850. The higher clock comes as a surprise, but bear in mind that these are unofficial specs and we’re taking them with a grain of salt.

The card will feature 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1000MHz, just like the HD 5850. It will closely resemble the HD 5850, as it will most likely use the same PCB and cooler. It features support for ATI Eyefinity and it packs two DVI outs, as well as HDMI and DisplayPort connectors.

According to an early EU listing, the card should cost around €215, but once again this is an unofficial figure. We guess it could easily drop below the €200 psychological barrier, but even if it doesn’t it still sounds like a very tempting deal. An average HD 5850 will set you back around €250, so the €215 price tag sounds quite reasonable.

We can’t confirm nor deny how accurate these numbers are though.

On the topic of retail supply I have trouble believing you’re going to see this side of February, because of CNY this model will feel a bit like a paper launch, saying that we should see supply middle of March.