The AMD Radeon HD 4830 is a graphics card that simply fills the gap between the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4670 and if you take a look at the price to performance ratio, you will clearly see that it's a good deal. The card was initally priced a bit high and it cost almost like a Radeon HD 4850, but the price went down and you can find it now at about $125. The deal gets even sweeter when you take into account that you can comfortably play all the popular games. One of the best Radeon HD 4830 cards is MSI's OverClock edition, which we will test today. Compared to reference Radeon HD 4830 cards, it has a couple of aces up its sleeve, such as 4+1 power phase and MSI's dual slot cooling. - FudZilla

MSI Radeon HD 4830 OverClock Series Board Review

Better components result in less consumption and provide better overclocking, but that's why Radeon HD 4830 OverClock cards end up being priced a bit higher than reference Radeon HD 4830's. Whether some $15 is worth it, we will see after our testing. The first thing you notice is a large aluminum cooler with a fan in the middle. The cooler is made of one piece of aluminum and it's tall enough to make this Radeon HD 4830 a dual slot card. You will find seaweed blade fans inside, which feature specially curved fins for better airflow. MSI uses these fans for over a year now, as they provide superior cooling compared to standard fans.

The Radeon HD 4830 is not inaudible, but although you will hear it from time to time it's still not uncomfortably loud. We would rate it at same noise levels as the reference Radeon HD 4830, but MSI's iteration runs much cooler. The cooler touches the GPU but not the memory, which is cooled by the fan. The card comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. The Radeon HD 4830 uses sturdy solid state chokes, solid capacitors and 4+1 phase power, which results in improved stability and consumption as well as better overclocking. And MSI overclocked the card by only 10MHz compared to reference 575MHz, some might want more.

Powering the card is, just like we're used to from mid-range models, done via one 6-pin PCI Express power connector. Just like the other Radeon HD 4800 series, the Radeon HD 4830 card is based on the RV770 core, manufactured in 55nm and packing 965 million transistors. Crippling the core to some extent is a usual practice in manufacturing of weaker models, and that means the Radeon HD 4830 comes without 160 stream processors. This means it features 640 stream processors compared to the full capacity of 800 stream processors. The GPU runs at 575MHz with the memory at 1800MHz effective clock speed.

The MSI Radeon HD 4830 OverClock version is based on the Radeon HD 4830 graphics processor, which is a crippled version of the RV770 chip used on the other Radeon HD 4800 series. The Radeon HD 4830's has got only 640 stream processor and a 585MHz clock, which will be enough to play all the popular games. Just like the rest of the RV770 cards, the Radeon HD 4830 also supports the new Avivo converter, als called ATI's stream computing. The MSI Radeon HD 4830 is special and we had no trouble overclocking it by 115MHz, and its temps were still some 30°C lower than on the reference Radeon HD 4830 cards.

Lower temperatures are a direct result of MSI's dual slot cooling as well as 4+1 phase power that ensures power stability and lesser strain on their power components. The MSI Radeon HD 4830 OverClock Edition is one of the best Radeon HD 4830 cards around and we sincerely recommend it if you want your card to have a long life. Great cooling and power stability are prerequisites for long life, and MSI's Radeon HD 4830 offers exactly that. It will set you back some $15 more than reference, but it's $15 well spent.