ATI continue to do things that frustrate us. We understand that they're not in the best position at the moment, but they just continue to make amateur mistakes. We're involved in the industry and the Radeon HD 4830 at launch made no noise whatsoever. There wasn't a company out there that wanted to send out a sample as soon as possible, nor did ATI make any effort as far as advertising the product goes. Now the thing is though, when we tested the Radeon HD 4830 from MSI we were surprised to see that it was a really a good card for its money. Today we have PowerColor's version of the graphics card, in its own design. So you have to wonder, is PowerColor going to come within arm's reach of the bar? - TweakTown

PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 Graphics Board Preview

PowerColor have opted for a taller box that isn't as wide. Across the top of it we have the PowerColor logo while across the bottom we have a bit of a motto and just above that the model, in this case the Radeon HD 4830. The rest of the box is mainly taken up by a picture of a sword wielding character. To the right of the box we have some ATI logos along with some of the main features including 512MB of GDDR3 memory, DVI and more. Turning the box over, we have some more information on the video card, some of the main features, the technology implemented along with a bit of a run down on CrossFire for a multi GPU config.

Moving to the card, we can see a black heatsink fan that sits in the middle of the card. On top of the fan we have a sticker that lets you know the video card is a PowerColor one. We can see a pretty basic fan design with nothing too fancy going on. While being hard to tell, the fan is a dual slot one, which is important to know for some people. And if you have a look closely you can see behind the heatsink we have some gold colored heat sinks that sit on top of the memory. We can also see another heatsink that sits towards the back of the board. Looking around the card, we have a single 6-pin PCI Express power connector.

Now in the clock speeds department this PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 doesn't hold any surprises. And the core carries with it the stock 575MHz clock while the 512MB of GDDR3 memory carries the stock 1800MHz effective clock. The Radeon HD 4830 really is a great little card. At $89 from Newegg you really can't go wrong. Spending the extra money on a Radeon HD 4850 is going to be worth it to people who can stretch their budget that far, but if you just want to stay under that all important $100 barrier then you honestly can't go wrong with the PowerColor Radeon HD 4830, as it is an excellent price for the performance.

What we love so much about this card as well is the included HDMI port, it really opens the card up for people who want a card for their home theater PC while packing a bit more punch when compared to its lower end companions. It's not all smiles though, the PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 lacks any form of bundle. With only a single DVI port on the card we would have liked a HDMI connector included in the bundle, which is something that we quite often see with HDMI cards that don't have two DVI ports. Apart from the bundle though, there's nothing to really to complain about, a great card for a pretty price tag.

Honestly, for the price there isn't a whole lot out there that's better. If you're not fussed about a bundle, want something that can game well on a 22inch monitor and don't want to spend a heap, the PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 is an excellent choice and a fantastic buy for people who don't want to break the bank.