I guess it is time to let the good’ol X1900XT to go. I ordered Sapphire 4830 which will be perfect (decent cooler, aggressive underclock when idle) considering my Antec Sonata case and should be a good match to my 3800x2 proc. Actually I will first see what kind of difference this card will make in Fallout 3 and think about changing that proc to a 6000x2. Speed increase should be about 50%. Do you think I am bottlenecked with this processor?

To my mind this card is surprisingly cheap! Competition is a good thing, I must say.

Anyone have an idea how much faster 4830 is compared to X1900XT?

Say, what ever happene to including GPU and memory clock speeds in the fillrate etc chart?

I didn't realize how much the price/performance value dropped so much when you go from HD4850 to HD4870 instead of going from HD4830 to HD4850.

Going from HD4830 to HD4850 is like a 25% increase in price and around a 5%-15% increase in performance

But going from a HD4850 to a HD4870 is like a 50% increase in price and around a 10%-20% increase in performance with the 20% being the more rare performance increase.

I've updated the review with new scores for the Radeon HD 4830 with all eight of its SIMD arrays and TMUs enabled. See the note at the end of the review for more info. Our overall take on the product isn't changed by these minor performance gains, though.

AMD has indeed confirmed that it shipped reviewers Radeon HD 4830 sample cards with too many units disabled, hurting performance versus the shipping products. We have already flashed our card with a new BIOS. Before the flash, our card showed up in GPU-Z as having 560 SPs. Afterwards, it reads 640 SPs. We've confirmed minor performance gains with the new BIOS.

I'll see about doing an update, but I'm not sure I'll be able to swing it right away due to other very pressing obligations I have.

whoops - reply to 40 - a 4850 for $140 after rebate is still even better, according to that argument

This is something important to check Scott: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/155

Nice review, nice card. I'm not sure what to make about power draw readings resulting in quite different ranks among various sites. One thing I noticed in this review even though it wasn't the featured card, and I may risk getting flamed by silly people for this given other recent remarks, is how well the 9600GT (note: overclocked version in this review) has held up over time. *Well, thinking about it the 9600GT hasn't been out that long, but still...

PRIME1 04:35 PM on Oct 22nd 2008
Does it even compare to a $70 9600GT

Based on current WUs, if Folding is more important then the 9800GT is still the better choice.

Things can change in a hurry once Stanford releases more AMD-friendly WU types.

Damage are you going to retest with the new bios?

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=74650

So uh is there any reviews of the 4830 in a crossfire config? 2way, 3way? how well does the card crossfire with a 4850?

Is this question a waist of time. I'm just curious.

Fine review. This card looks like a winner for the fat upper-middle of the market.

One question: since this GPU is an RV770 only cut down by two SIMD units, and may just be a binned version of chips otherwise destined for the higher 48xx boards, I assume it still has working dp fp units (unlike the RV730)? Not that it really matters for its intended market; just curious.
...
You know, Scott, now that you've got that fancy new sound meter itching to be tried, here's something to think about once you get certain other significant looming reviews out of the way....

How about putting together a fully water-cooled (ie silent) test rig, strictly for testing nothing other than video cards' sound levels? It wouldn't have to be fancy -- just a bare motherboard hooked to a water cooling rig (you have an old reserator kicking around IIRC) -- and you wouldn't have to update the CPU or the motherboard at least until the next PCIe revision. You'd just pop the card in, install the drivers (you could keep a couple of HDs around with an OS image with drivers from the red and green camps, so all you'd have to do is a quick driver update), do an idle sound reading, then launch a benchmark that pegs the GPU and do another sound reading. You could use an IR gun to do a "finger-friendliness" external temp reading while you're at it.

I think you have the 9600GT and 9800GT backwards on the Enemy Territory:QW 0AA0AF 1280x1024 graph

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15752/6

Well we have yet another lower, upper performance-midrange-gamer-value graphics card now. ;) Have we reached the "magical" +/-$5-per-product-line point yet?

That 9800GT isn't very representative of what you see at the store these days though. Many of them seem to run >600 MHz core these days and those run cheaper than a 4830. That would decisively smack up a 9600GT. I doubt it could rival that 4830 yet though.

I do like the 4670's idle power use and performance level. That's good stuff; it's awfully close to the power demands of an IGP but you get way, way more performance in every way. It's too bad that with the ability to go +$10 and get quite a bit more game card, that it isn't really worth buying. And if you're not into games and just need video decoding, a $20 3450 or 780G is basically its equal (unless you're very picky).

IMO, anyone who plays games should just jump on a 9800GTX or 4850 and be done with it. They are so cheap that the difference between anything lower is just splitting hairs and thinking too hard.

TR should have tested the overclocked MSI it's only $99 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127381

Scott: That puts the 4830 almost directly opposite the GeForce 9800 GT, and AMD identifies that card as the 4830's most direct competitor.

Yes, the 9800 GT is doomed. Unless its price goes closer to 100-109 dollars or they bundle a really good game with it, like Assassin's Creed, Crysis: Warhead or even Far Cry 2, it's lost.
Well done, AMD.

I think there have been good points made for either case here.
How I see the problem is this:
No one ever asks "Is the overclocked 216 made by(whichever company) faster than a stock 4870?
What they always hear is "GTX216 beats HD4870"with no caveats on which model is being tested.
We need to get the point across that particular card "A" being tested is faster than this model "B" made by the other maker.
It's the broad generalizations that cause much of the fanboy wars when in fact it is the particulars of each card and how it performs in relation to
the model it's being tested against that are important.
I think it wouldn't hurt to stress this point a little more when we discuss video cards in the future given how close the performance is amongst the various models and not just make sweeping statements about which series is the best unless there is an undeniably large performance gap between them.
The new 4830 is a nice little performer for the price I must say,as is the very sweetly priced 9800GT....the Golden Age of 3D graphics performance is right now.....better and better performance and cheaper and cheaper prices...gotta like that.

I can't help thinking that all the protests about using a higher clocked card in the HD48701GB V GTX260 216 test a few weeks ago are somewhat responsible for TR avoiding the "Higher clocked" MSI 9800GT mentioned early in the article...
Props to TR for listening to the valid criticisms made on that article,perhaps the people who were so vocal in shouting them down can take a lesson from this.
The stock 9800GT puts up a pretty good fight against it,I wonder how understanding the NVidia fans here would have been if a higher clocked 4830 had been tested instead and showed a much bigger winning margin than today's results?

post edited to remove excessive wrongness. dag nabbit.

For some reason, it feels instinctively so very wrong that a "low mid" video card with an 4x30 suffix slightly outdo a relatively new "high mid" 9800 GT.

But uh, more power to AMD ATi I guess!

double post...

I wonder how long it will be before we see this card dip below the 130bucks mark. Most of the other AMD cards have dropped below the suggested price almost immediately.

i like the numbers on that one...but the most impressive one was the X2 card...lol it didn't flinch until 2560 reso rolled around

amazing card...but yeah the 4830, definitely a worthwhile buy and at such an affordable price...i guess where AMD fails (somewhat) at CPU making/marketing they have ATI to thank for keeping them in the game so to speak :)

Damn, that was fast. Still a great review, and even more awesome that the review is released the day that Cyril made the announcement on the news page.