With Radeon HD 4670 doing pretty well as an entry-level gaming GPU and the HD 4850 still being a great mid-range choice, ATI has now filled the price and performance gap between them with the brand new Radeon H'D 4830. Sitting right between the 4670 and 4850, cards built with this GPU will compete directly with Nvidia's 9600GT.

FEATURES: Built on the same 55 nm manufacturing process as the HD 4850 and the HD 4870, the Radeon HD 4830 employs a total of 640 stream processors running on a 256-bit interface with the core and memory clocked at 575 MHz and 1800 MHz respectively. In fact the card is identical to the Radeon HD 4850 so much so that they share the same power rating of 110 W; the only difference is slower memory and clock speeds and fewer stream processors. Despite being a tad slower than its elder sibling, the HD 4830 has a memory bandwidth of 57.6 GB/s and comes with a considerable 740 gigaflops of computational power.

The card features a single-slot design that uses ATI's reference cooler that cools the GPU, memory and voltage regulators. The card comes with a six-pin power connector to power it up since the HD 4830 consumes more power than the PCle slot can provide.

The rear panel features two DVI ports and a video output port. Bundled with the¬card is the usual DVI to VGA adapter, one crossfire bridge, an instruction manual and a driver CD.



PERFORMANCE: This is one area where you can be sure that you won't have to grumble much, but don't expect the card to handle games at the highest setting. The card handled Crysis with ease at a resolution of 1680xl 050 with no AA and overall settings'set to high. In fact, for a game like Call of Juarez, which has a reputation of bringing down most cards, the HD 4830 delivered a decent score of 34 fps at 1280xl024.

Temperature is one aspect you will have to worry about though. Even in an open 'environment the reference cooler gets quite hot with temperatures touching 72 degrees centigrade on full load and 52 degrees centigrade in idle mode. Make sure your cabinet has enough breathing space before investing in this card or else you might just end up with a black PCB rather than a red one and trust us, nobody wants to go through that.

VERDICT: The HD 4830 offers decent performance for its price and definitely gives the 9600GT a run for its money. So if you are an ATI fan and find the HD 4850 a little out of reach, pick up the Radeon HD 4830, it won't disappoint.

FOR: Single slot design, good performance for a budget card.

AGAINST: Overheats.