The video card market is presently one of the more active segments of the computer component industry, and the push for faster, more powerful cards has kept things interesting. While the focus may be on the higher end cards, there are plenty of cards being released for those with smaller budgets and less of a need to be on the absolute cutting edge.
Sapphire has a relatively new card on the market that should appeal to those who consider price about as much as they consider performance when selecting a video card. Their Radeon HD4830 512MB graphics card is shown in the promotional image below, and it will be the subject of this review.
Before taking a look at the sample provided for review, let's take a look at the features and specifications for the Sapphire Radeon HD4830 512MB graphics card. The items listed below cover some of the key items, and for complete details please visit the
official product page on the Sapphire website.
Features:
» GDDR3 memory 256-bit memory interface
» DirectX 10.1
» 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
» ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
» Use up to four discrete cards with an AMD 790FX based motherboard
» PCI Express® 2.0 support
» Dynamic geometry acceleration
» Game physics processing capability
» ATI AvivoHD video and display technology
» Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD) for Blu-ray and HD Video
» Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound supportOn-chip HDCP
» ATI PowerPlay technology
Specifications:
» I/O Output: Dual DL-DVI-I+HDTV
» Core Clock: 575 MHz
» Memory Clock: 900MHz, 1800 Mbps
» PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
» 512MB /256bit GDDR3 memory interface
» Dual Slot Active Cooler
» HDMI compliant via dongle
» 7.1 Audio Channel Support
» Microsoft DirectX 10.1 support
» Shader Model 4.1 support
There doesn't seem to be anything lacking from the items listed above, and there might actually be more than you might expect for a card that costs about $100 (US).
