Just over a week ago ATI launched the Radeon HD 4830 which is the latest card in the Radeon HD 4800 series range and hits the market at around $130. Unfortunately, due to a BIOS issue on the first batch of review sample cards, both reference models and some retail branded the full number of unified shaders was not available and performance was therefore negatively impacted. Today we present our view featuring cards from Sapphire, PowerColor and HIS. All have the correct BIOS version and we will be running them through a selection of the latest games. This way we can get a clear picture on the actual performance and match is against comparable NVIDIA offerings. - DriverHeaven

Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 512MB Video Card Review

Sapphire package their Radeon HD 4830 in an instantly recognisable box and across the front are various specifications such as the memory count. Inside we find a very thorough bundle which includes everything we could hope for, other than an HDMI cable. And Sapphire use their own design PCB for the Radeon HD 4830 and attached to it is a rather impressive proprietary cooler. This gives the card a very unique look when compared to the cards based on ATI's reference design and we prefer the Sapphire version. Underneath the cooler is 512MB of GDDR3 clocked at 1800MHz connected to the RV770 core by a 256-bit bus.

The core itself runs at 575MHz and features 640 unified shaders with 16 raster operating units and as expected this is a DirectX 10.1 compatible card with full Blu-ray acceleration. PowerColor have a heroine on their packaging and list a few specifications next to her. Bundled with the card is, well, pretty much nothing. The card itself looks quite similar to the ATI reference design but there has been some reorganisation of capacitors on the PCB as well as their addition of a second heatsink on the power circuitry. The cooler is dual slot and unlike the Sapphire version it features a set of ramsinks to add cooling to the memory.

Despite the extra cooling and large heatsink the clock speeds on this model are the same as the reference card, 575MHz core and 1800MHz memory. The core specifications are also identical as are the features, however the board does feature a different set of outputs. The packaging used by HIS is also instantly recognisable and as well as featuring their branding we find a full list of basic specifications for the card. The bundle falls between PowerColor and Sapphire and as well as some instruction leaflets and a sticker we are given some convertors. HIS also stays away from the reference design and uses a blue PCB.

The power circuitry is covered by a copper heatsink and the core is cooled by a dual slot cooler with transparent fins. The clocks on this model are 575MHz core and 1800MHz memory and outputs come in the form of two dual link DVI's and a TV-out. As with the other Radeon HD 4800 series cards HDMI and HDCP are supported as well as Blu-ray acceleration and DirectX 10.1. Now to overclock the Radeon HD 4830's we used the ATI auto tune option within the Catalyst control center, a very quick and easy process and one of the best aspects of the ATI software. Of course there are other tools to overclock, such as RivaTuner.

Before starting we expected the PowerColor card to have the highest memory overclocks due to the chips having dedicated heatsinks but this proved not to be the case. The card actually had the lowest memory overclock of 140MHz, which was 40MHz behind the HIS and 420MHz behind the hugely impressive Sapphire card. And Sapphire also had the highest core overclock with 690MHz equal to PowerColor and HIS were a little behind on 640MHz. Temperature testing was performed at each cards default fan speed. In this area it is clear that Sapphire and HIS are using coolers which are much more effective than PowerColor.

The Radeon HD 4830 card is a very impressive product due to the performance it offers for the price of approximately $130. It did not win every benchmark in our article but other than Lost Planet Colonies it was never far away from the equivalent GeForce and considering it was up against the best GeForce 9800 GT on the market this is an impressive feature. One of the more impressive results was the Far Cry 2 where the Radeon HD 4830 is able to match the GeForce 9800 GT frame for frame when using the latest hotfix driver. So it is clear to see that the Radeon HD 4830 is a card which should be given serious consideration.