With the great economic hardships that we are in more and more people are being cost conscious when they make a purchase wether it be gas for the car or computer hardware. We want the best we can get for the money we spend. ATI has realized this issue and also realize that people want to get that upgrade to bring their computers faster and up to date so they have released the Radeon HD 4830 series card. The Radeon HD 4830 series cards bring a good performer for not a lot of money to the video card table. PowerColor has released their Radeon HD 4830 targeted at mainstream PC users looking for a bit of a graphics boost, as such brings a new product for the holiday season. - Overclockers Club

PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 Custom Cooling Review

The PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 card comes packaged in the same type and design that the other Radeon HD 4800 series cards arrived in that we previously tested. On the front of the retail box is their mascot and logo surrounded by specification logos and the board model. On the rear of the box PowerColor expands on some of the more important specifications and features that the Radeon HD 4830 has to offer. Opening the packaging there is an inner box that is designed to keep the contents and the card safe and secure. Once you open the flap you get a teaser of the card in the protective anti-static wrapping.

Inside the box is the PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 video card, the driver CD and a manual. Nothing else is provided. The Radeon HD 4830 uses the same RV770 core that is used in the Radeon HD 4850 cards however it is clocked at a lower speed of 575MHz and only has 640 shader units and 32 texture units unlike the PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 which has 800 shaders and 40 texture units. The memory also runs at a slower 1800MHz effective. Just like the other Radeon HD 4800 series cards this card is PCI Express 2.0, runs on a 256-bit memory bus and comes with the standard 512MB of high speed GDDR3 memory.

PowerColor has decided to use the reference color PCB board but chose to go with a larger dual slot aftermarket cooler for reduced temperatures which is nice since most 4800 series cards run warm. To power the Radeon HD 4830 there is a 6-pin power port on the rear of the board. This provides the card with enough juice to push your games to the max. There are two tabs on the top spine of the card that are used to connect multiple cards in a CrossFire combination. You can string up to four cards for a QuadFire system with a supported motherboard. The aftermarket cooler is made of aluminum and with fins to dissipate the heat.

Wooow, were we surprised when we got to overclocking this baby. She took everything we threw at her and begged for even more. Using the Catalyst control center we were able to increase the core speed from 575MHz to a whopping 670MHz, almost a full 100MHz increase. Not too bad for a little card like this. As expected the memory came close to the rated 2000MHz limit topping off at 1990MHz speed effective. This card easily reached these speeds by upping them in 5MHz increments each until it became unstable and then we backed off 1MHz at a time until we had no more game issues or display problems.

What can we say, our jaws are on the floor currently. We were not expecting this card to do that well. We mean the Radeon HD 4800 series are great cards but with what was disabled we had fears that it crippled a good card. Boy were we wrong. At stock this card even puts the Radeon HD 4850 in a battle for the race and bypasses even the GeForce 9800 GT and the GeForce 8800 GT cards which were considered great cards of their time. Overclocking this beast puts it that much more in the lead. At a price of $120 this card is a no brainer. And that is for sure the raison why ATI released this Radeon HD 4830 series graphics card.

For under $250, which is about what a GeForce GTX 260 would cost you, you can have a killer CrossFire combination that could possibly out do some of the best single cards on the market. Better yet pair this card with a Radeon HD 4850 or even a Radeon HD 4870 and you have a low cost upgrade that allows you to run on maximum resolutions and settings. With what the PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 has to offer you would be a noob not to check it out. PowerColor, by adding a different heatsink for the Radeon HD 4830, has helped solve the heat issues that plagued the earlier Radeon HD 4800 series cards.