A Closer Look
Opting to forego the usual colorful plastic housing, Sapphire has gone for a functional cooler that still manages to look polished. The backplate only takes up one slot, but the height of the cooler will effectively block off a second slot. The lack of an external air channel means the card is recycling hot air into the case, but given the 4830’s low thermal output, this shouldn’t be an issue in a properly ventilated case. This card requires a single PCI-express 6-pin connector for power in addition to what it gets over the bus; an adaptor is provided if your power supply lacks this connector.
Here we see the sticker containing the model number and SKU info, as well as a sticker indicating HDCP compatibility:
GPU-Z was unable to provide us with full information about this card, unsurprising given its very recent release. To fill in some of the missing pieces, we turn to ATI‘s own Catalyst Control Center:
Test Rig
To run this card through its paces, we’ll be using a combination of synthetic benchmarks and demanding games, to get a good idea of how this card performs in a variety of tasks. For this evaluation, we will be using the following test rig:
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 @ 2.4GHz |
| Motherboard | ASUS Commando |
| Memory | 2GB Corsair TwinX DDR2-800 (2 x 1GB) |
| Video | Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 w/512MB GDDR3 memory |
| Hard Drive 1 | Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 160GB SATA/150 |
| Hard Drive 2 | Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA/150 |
| Hard Drive 3 | Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA/150 |
| Power Supply | Coolmax GreenPower 950W |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate w/SP1 and all current updates |
| Drivers | ATI Catalyst 8.10 |
Actually the 128bit memory interface can indeed compete with one using a 256bit interface depending upon many other factors like overall bandwidth, GPU power, memory type and amount.
I find it hard to believe that a card with a 128bit memory interface can compete with one with 256bit.
Actually, from what I can find, the 4770 ranges from $99-109, whereas the 4830 ranges from $74-109. The 4830 may not be in the same bracket now as when it was released, but it’s still got good bang for the buck.
its difficult to see why you’ve recommended this card, when a 4770 will outperform this one in all benchmarks, and is 10 $ cheaper at the very least.