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With the HD 4830 AMD has finalized their line-up and can offer cards at all price-points. We’ve tested the HIS HD 4830 Fan (Full HD 1080p) HDMI to see if the card and GPU offers enough over the HD 4670 as well as can compete with the GeForce 9800GT.
INTRODUCTION
AMD has had a very good year when it comes to graphics cards. The HD4000-series has proved to be competitive in basically every segment and the best proof for this is the fact that it has forced NVidia to rethink their pricing-structure and lower prices to meet the competition.
If we look at the various models we however notice a small gap in the line-up.
HD 4650: ~$70
HD 4670: ~$80
HD 4850: $150-$199
HD 4870: $200-$299
The gap obviously is between the HD4670 and the HD 4850. Either you spend around $80 or take a steep step up to $150 and above. The GPU that we are going to talk about today is aimed to fill that gap and give users an opportunity to get more speed while still not having to pay for the HD 4850. The GPU is of course the HD 4830 and the RSSP is $100 – $150.
HISÂ was kind enough to send over their newest card, the HIS HD 4830 and it is that card we will review at the same time as we present the HD 4830.
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THE HD 4830
It is no surprise that the HD 4830 shares the same specifications and features as the rest of the HD4800-family of GPU:s. Lets compare its specifications to its nearest neighbours:
|
Feature/Specification |
 HD 4670 |
 HD 4830 |
HD 4850 |
|
Memory
|
GDDR3/
DDR3/DDR2 |
512 MB GDDR3
|
512 MB/
1 GB GDDR3 |
|
Engine Clock
|
600/750 MHz
|
575 MHz
|
625 MHz
|
|
Stream Processors
|
320
|
640
|
800
|
|
Texture Units
|
32 TMUs
|
32 TMUs
|
40 TMUs
|
|
Max Board Power
|
75 W
|
110 W
|
110 W
|
As you can see we loose a couple of stream processors, a few TMU’s and get a slightly lower clocked GPU compared to the HD 4850.
On the feature side nothing much has changed. Some highlights include:
- DirectX10.1-support
- ATI Avivo HD with hardware acceleration of H.264/VC-1-playback
- 7.1-sound support over HDMI
The reference card is a single-slot solution with the regular AMD-single-slot cooler that we’ve seen on many cards.
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THE HIS HD 4830 Fan (FULL HD 1080p) HDMI 512MB
HIS was kind enough to send us a HIS HD 4830 Fan. This HD 4830-card has similar specifications as the reference HD 4830:
|
Feature/Specification |
 HIS HD 4830 |
|
Memory
|
512 MB GDDR3
|
|
Engine Clock
|
575 MHz
|
|
Stream Processors
|
640
|
|
Texture Units
|
32 TMUs
|
|
Max Board Power
|
110 W
|
However, when we take a look at the card we quickly notice that HIS has not gone the short way and just copied the reference design but instead put their own cooling-fan (I guess this is where the word FAN in the title comes from) on the card.
The card looks very barebone. Except for the fan there is not much else in terms of cooling on the card.
The cooling-fan is quite big and will possibly obstruct any card in an adjacent slot. The performance of the fan however is flawless and even when we put our ears near it, it did not make much noise.
HIS does not add especially many extras in the box and all we seem to find is a DVI => VGA-adapter and a DVI => HDMI-adapter.
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TEST CONFIGURATION
The video cards were tested on the following system:
|
Test Platform |
|
|
Processor |
AMD Phenom X3 8750 |
|
Motherboard |
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H |
|
Memory |
2 GB (2 x 1 GB)Â Corsair DDR2-800 |
|
Drive(s) |
|
|
Graphics |
|
|
Cooling |
Zalman CNPS7500-CU |
|
Power Supply |
Corsair 600W |
|
Display |
Dell 24″ |
|
Case |
None |
|
Operating System |
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit |
 The following games/programs where used for testing:
- 3DMark06
- 3DMark Vantage
- Devil May Cry 4
- World in Conflict
- Crysis: Warhead
We also measured the total system power consumption at indle and under load.
THE BENCHMARKS
3DMark06 & 3DMark Vantage
We will start off with 3Dmark06 and 3Dmark Vantage.
There’s no big surprise in 3Dmark06. The HD 4830 just trails the GeForce 8800GT (and thus the 9800GT) slightly but the difference is very slim.
In 3Dmark Vantage we see the absurd CPU-score that you get when using a newer GeForce card (with accelerated physic support in drivers). I haven’t followed the drama but last I heard Futuremark would not accept this. The actual GPU-score is slightly lower on the 8800GT than on the HD 4830.
Crysis:Warhead
Crysis: Warhead is a stand-alone expansion of the demanding PC-game Crysis released earlier this year. Just like Crysis, Crysis: Warhead needs a beefy machine to work. We used the HardOC benchmark program to bench the game and selected the Airfield-map for the test.
The GeForce 8800GT and the HD 4850 leads the pack with the HD 4830 starting to slip away when we increase the resolution. The framerates is really crappy though meaning that we still need to start turning off stuff just to get playable framerates.
 Devil May Cry 4
Devil May Cry 4 is yet another demanding PC-game. Luckily it has a benchmark mode which was used for this test.
The AMD-cards have a firm lead in DMC4. The engine seems to favour AMD. There is a big gap between the HD 4850 and the HD 4830, something we haven’t seen in other games.
World In Conflict
The last game we have benchmarked is World In Conflict, a great but short  RTS with excellent graphics.
The HD 4830 trails the HD 4850 and the GeForce 8800GT but crushes the HD 4670.
Power Consumption of the whole system
Last but not least we measured the power consumption of the system while it was just sitting at the Windows desktop (“Idle”) and while running 3DMark Vantage at 1920×1200 (“Under load”).
The HD 4830 isn’t a power saver itself but does not go through the roof either. The HIS 4830 seems to need a few extra Watts. We’re not sure whether it is the fan that needs a few more Watts or something else.
CONCLUSION
With the HD 4830 AMD has closed the final gap in their line-up and can offer products from bottom up to the top. As with their other cards the HD 4830 GPU easily can compete with the NVidia equivalent (in this case GeForce 9800GT) and we like features like the 8-channel support over HDMI as well as DirectX 10.1 support.
The HIS HD 4830 is a great little card and has a recommened price around $129.99 (there will also be an offer for a $10 mail-in-rebate in the beginning). While the fan looks a bit suspicious, especially when you consider the nice IceQ-fans HIS usually use, it turns out to perform well. The only thing we are a bit dissapointed with is the lack of a good bundle.
Pros
+Â Great performance for a low price
+ Good cooling
+ Cheap
+Â Great features
Cons
– Bundle is pretty bad.
The The HIS HD 4830 Fan (Full HD 1080p) HDMI gets a rating of 8 out of 10 and a Bjorn3D.com Seal of Approval. Â
