ASUS EAH4830

After a rather disappointing HD 3000 series, ATI took the world by surprise with the HD 4000 generation of graphics cards. Since the launch of the HD 4000 series back in June, ATI has reclaimed its presence in the market and has been steadily eating away at Nvida's marketshare. Benchmark Reviews has had the opportunity to review several cards from the HD 4800 series lineup and today we look at one of the newest additions to the family: the Radeon HD 4830. This particular model, the EAH4830, comes to us from Asus and sports a custom cooler design and factory overclocked memory. We'll put it through its paces and find out how it compares to its two closest siblings; the HD 4670 and the HD 4850.

At roughly $100 to $130, the HD 4830 fills in a previously vacant price point between the HD 4670 and the HD 4850. With the Holiday season upon us, this will certainly be an important price range and most ATI partners have been working overtime to get these cards out in time. The EAH4830 model that we'll be testing today is a slightly modified version of ATI's reference design. Asus threw out the standard single-slot cooler and opted for its own two-slot solution, which should offer better thermal performance. They also pre-overclocked the memory from a reference speed of 1800MHz to 2000MHz and incorporated high-quality capacitors and mosfets to improve stability and heat generation.

The HD 4830 is built around the same RV770 GPU used in the rest of the HD 4800 series, but with only 640 stream processors activated instead of the full 800. In this review we'll look at just how much difference those extra 160 stream processors can make by testing it against our reference HD 4850. We'll also be comparing it to the HD 4670, which ATI considers to be one step below the 4830 in both price and performance. At the end of the review, we'll pull all of the numbers together and look at which card offers the best bang for the buck.

About the company: Asus

Asus is one of the most respected manufacturers of computer hardware of the industry, including video cards. Here is what they have to say about their commitment to quality:

"ASUS, a technology-oriented company blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is well known for high-quality and innovative technology. As a leading company in the new digital era, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium.

In 2007, one in three desktop PCs sold was powered by an ASUS motherboard; and the company's 2007 revenues reached US$6.9 billion.

ASUS products' top quality stems from product development. It's like learning Chinese Kung-Fu; one must begin with cultivating the "Chi" and inner strength. Besides innovating cutting-edge features, ASUS engineers also pay special attention to EMI (electromagnetic interference), thermal, acoustics and details that usually go unnoticed to achieve complete customer satisfaction. ASUS notebooks are the first TCO'99-certified notebooks worldwide.

The requirements for this honor include radiation emission control, energy (battery consumption), ecology (environment friendly) and ergonomics. To succeed in this ultra-competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed-to-market, cost and service. That's why all 8,000 over employees of ASUS strive for the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" to offer the best quality without compromising cost and time-to-market while providing maximum value to all customers through world-class services.

With unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, ASUS won 2,568 awards in 2007, meaning on average, the company received over 7 awards every day last year. BusinessWeek has ranked ASUS amongst its InfoTech 100 for the 10th straight year; and the company is ranked as No.1 in quality products and services by the Wall Street Journal. ASUS has also achieved the number one title on the annual league table of Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands with a brand value of 11.96 billion US dollars."

Radeon HD 4830 Features

ATI Radeon^TM HD 4800 Series GPUs bring the power of graphics ‘supercomputing' to gamers, setting a new standard for visual computing. Redefine the way you play and take HD gaming to the extreme with best-in-class performance. With up to 1.2 teraFLOPS on tap, the TeraScale graphics engine delivers an immersive, cinematic gaming experience. Add this graphics card to your PC and watch Blu-ray movies and play HD content with incredible visual fidelity or take your experience to another level with new multimedia capabilities. Do it all with break-through efficiency that doesn't compromise performance.

• GDDR3 memory 256-bit memory interface
• DirectX 10.1 Support
• 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 support On-chip HDCP
• ATI PowerPlay technology

Redefine HD Gaming The ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series GPUs deliver a cinematic gaming experience with unprecedented performance. The powerful new TeraScale graphics will propel you deep into your gameplay with seamless frame rates and high resolutions. Enhanced anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering create striking graphics with unparalleled realism so you can max out the settings of the most demanding next-generation games or revitalize your favorite titles. Play today while preparing for tomorrow with tessellation, support for DirectX 10.1 and scalable ATI CrossFireX technology.

• TeraScale Graphics Engine
  The powerful new TeraScale graphics engine features deliver high resolutions and fast frame rates.
• Enhanced Anti-Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering
  High performance anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
• DirectX 10.1
  Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
• ATI CrossFireX Technology
  ATI CrossFireX technology with up to quad GPU support offers superior scalability so your system is ready to level up when you are.
• PCI Express 2.0
  Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
• Power to Spare
  This GPU has the brute processing power needed for physics, artificial intelligence, stream computing and ray tracing calculations.

Go Beyond HD Video Add an ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series GPU to your PC and watch the latest Blu-ray and HD movies play with incredible fidelity -upscale to nearly twice the display resolution of HD content. Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities. Sophisticated new features within ATI Avivo^TM HD technology provide a truly responsive experience. Support for the latest audio visual interconnects ensures you can take advantage of the latest display technology.

• Unified Video Decoder 2
  Unified Video Decoder 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience for even the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Also, take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities.
• Upscale Beyond 1080p
  Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond.
• On-chip HDCP
  On-chip HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) makes life easier by allowing you to playback HDCP protected content.
• HDMI
  Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV.

Break-through Efficiency Like its predecessors, the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series GPUs offer optimal performance and break-through efficiency with platform-independent intelligent power management. ATI PowerPlay delivers the power needed to blaze through even the most intense games while intuitively conserving energy at idle or when demand is low.

• ATI PowerPlay Technology
  ATI PowerPlay Technology delivers high performance when needed and conserves power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.
• Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process
  Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process.

Asus EAH4830 Specifications

In order to cater to users who require excellent graphical performance boosts and exceptional cooling from their graphic cards, ASUS, world-leading producer of top quality graphics solutions, has today introduced two ranges of self-designed graphics cards, namely the EAH4870X2 and the latest EAH4830 Series. These ASUS designed graphics cards are equipped with specially designed fansinks that deliver extreme cooling of up to 24°C for the GPU and low noise-levels of only 29 dB-greatly enhancing the gaming enjoyment of users. The inclusion of the Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) shield, Covered Chokes, low RDS (on) mosfets and the Stabilizer Solid Polymer Aluminum Capacitors infuses extreme performance with durability for total peace of mind.

Enjoy Up to 24°C Cooler GPUs with Specially Designed Fansink
The latest EAH4830 Series also comes equipped with a specially designed fansink to quickly transfer heat away from the GPU for extreme cooling. Besides the extraordinary cooling capacity, the fansink on the EAH4830 Series operates with noise levels of only 29 dB-almost imperceptible in a quiet room, catering to users who require maximum cooling without excessive fan rotation noise.

Unparalleled Efficiency and Performance with Ultimate Armaments
Keeping in line with ASUS' Rock Solid promise for quality, the upcoming ASUS self-designed version of the EAH4870X2 and the latest EAH4830 Series will come with several solutions that will help deliver top quality graphic performances. With the EMI shield, 66% of EMI can be reduced for more stable signals; while the Covered Chokes guarantee more efficient power and less heat generation in comparison with traditional Toroidal Coil Chokes. Additionally, the low RDS(on) mosfets lower temperatures by 10-15°C in comparison with the traditional thicker versions, and last but not least, the Stabilizer Solid Polymer Aluminum Capacitors reduces power loss for more stable operations and durability-even under long-term use. Therefore, users will be able to enjoy extreme performance and have peace of mind-only with the ASUS EAH4870X2 and the latest EAH4830 Series.

Closer Look: Asus HD 4830

Asus stuck with the standard "Radeon Red" PCB for their first edition of the HD 4830. The size and shape of the PCB also seems to be based on a reference design and matched the length of the Asus HD 4850 included in this review. The black on red color scheme looks great and has a strong ATI feel to it--something long time fans will love. Aside from standard features, Asus also includes high quality power delivery components and a custom heatsink and fan.

The usual accompaniment of outputs is present on the Asus EAH4830, including two dual-link DVI outputs, as well as s-video and component outputs via the included adapter. The DVI connections can also double as VGA or HDMI outputs with the proper adapters. Unfortunately, Asus only included the VGA adapter. If you want to run audio and video through the HDMI connection, you'll have to purchase a separate adapter. It's not a show-stopper, but it would have been nice if Asus included it for us.

The HD 4800 series has been plagued with temperature issues since it launched in June. Fortunately, Asus went with a custom cooling solution that should keep the EAH4830 in check. It looks to be a custom Asus design, featuring a solid aluminum heatsink and a well-sized fan attached via a plastic fan shroud. The tradeoff here is that the larger HSF will take up a second slot in your case. This isn't likely to be a problem for most people, but you may want to double-check for clearance issues before pulling out your wallet.

Clearance issues aside, should you pick up your own EAH4830, you'll also be treated to the standard accessory kit. This card comes with the usual manual and driver CD, as well as a 4-pin to 6-pin power adapter, VGA adapter, and component outputs. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, Asus seems to have left out a DVI-HDMI adapter with their accessory kit. They also neglected to include a crossfire bridge, which could be a turn-off to those looking to put two of these in a crossfire setup. A quick survey of other HD 4830's on the market, however, reveals that Asus does have one of the more complete accessory bundles out its competitors. Perhaps this price-point doesn't warrant such extras, but they would certainly be a welcome addition.

EAH4830 Detailed Features

As an ATI partner, Asus relies on ATI provide the guts of its Radeon series of graphics cards. The EAH4830, as with all other HD 4830's, features a RV770LE chip from ATI. The RV770LE is essentially the same RV770 chip used in the rest of the HD 4800 family, but with one notable difference: the number of active stream processors has been reduced from 800 to 640. Fortunately, the memory interface was left untouched and the HD 4830 should speed along at the same 256-bit memory bus as its bigger brothers.

ATI/AMD refer to their RV770 architecture as the "Terascale Graphics Engine." This is a reference to the fact that the HD 4800 series of graphics cards were the first to break the one teraflop barrier in desktop graphics processing power. While you may not see the teraflop barrier with the HD 4830, it does retain the key features of this architecture, including DirectX 10.1 support, 24x anti-aliasing, and a full range of texture filtering options. As you'll see in our benchmarks later, this adds up to a very formidable card and excellent price/performance ratio.

To help compensate for the 160 stream processor deficit of the HD 4830, Asus went with high quality GDDR3 from Qimonda and overclocked it to 2000MHz. This adds up to a memory bandwidth on par with the HD 4850, and should provide the EAH4830 with an edge over its competition. Factory overclocking has become very popular with the last few generations of video cards, but most of the other HD 4830's on the market are running at stock speeds. While other cards may be able to reach these speeds, Asus is currently one of the only manufacturers to guarantee it by sending their 4830's out the door already overclocked.

The other big selling point that differentiates the EAH4830 from its competition is the use of high quality power components. The higher quality parts should result in better overall stability and reduced heat output, particularly when overclocking. Interestingly, the HD 4830 has the same power specification as the HD 4850 (110 Watts). This is likely due to the binning process that takes place at ATI. The RV770 chips that fail to run the full 800 stream processors need for an HD 4850, are dropped down to the next bin and labeled as RV770LE chips for use in HD 4830's. Even with portions of the chip deactivated, these chips are likely to run at the same voltage and require the same amount of power as the other HD 4800 series cards.

Video Card Testing Methodology

At the start of all tests, the previous display adapter driver is uninstalled and trace components are removed using Driver Cleaner Pro.We then restart the computer system to establish our display settings and define the monitor. Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. The synthetic benchmark tests in 3DMark06 will utilize shader models 2.0 and 3.0. In our higher-end VGA products we conduct tests at the following resolutions: 1280x1024 (19" Standard LCD), 1680x1050 (22-24" Widescreen LCD), and 1920x1200 (24-28" Widescreen LCD). In some tests we utilized widescreen monitor resolutions, since more users are beginning to feature these products for their own computing.

Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proved extremely important in the World in Conflict and Supreme Commander benchmarks, as the first run served to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, with the average results displayed in our article.

Our site polls and statistics indicate that the over 90% of our visitors use their PC for playing video games, and practically every one of you are using a screen resolutions mentioned above. Since all of the benchmarks we use for testing represent different game engine technology and graphic rendering processes, I feel that this battery of tests will provide a diverse range of results for you to gauge performance on your own computer system. Since most gamers and enthusiasts are still using Windows XP, it was decided that DirectX 9 would be used for all tests until demand and software support improve for Windows Vista.

Test System

• Motherboard: Asus P5Q-E (Intel P45 Chipset) with version 1406 BIOS
• Processor: Intel Q9450 Core 2 Quad 2.66 GHz (Overclocked to 3.2 GHz)
• System Memory: Corsair XMS2 DHX DDR2 800 (4-4-4-12)
• Audio: Integrated ADI AD2000B
• Disk Drive: Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB
• Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-215DBK DVD/CD-RW
• Enclosure: Antec P180B Mid-Tower
• PSU: Antec NeoHE 550W
• Monitor: Dell 2408WFP 24" LCD
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP3

Benchmark Applications

• 3DMark06 v1.1.0 (8x Anti Aliasing & 16x Anisotropic Filtering)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare v1.7.568 (4x AA/16x Trilinear AF)
• Crysis v1.21 Benchmark (High Settings, 0x and 4x Anti-Aliasing)
• Devil May Cry 4 (High Settings, 4x Anti-Aliasing, 16x Anisotropic Filtering)
• World in Conflict v1.0.0.9 Performance Test (Very High Setting: 4x AA/4x AF)

Video Card Test Products

• HIS Hightech Radeon HD 4670 H467QS512P (Catalyst 8.10)
• Asus Radeon HD 4830 EAH4830 (Catalyst 8.10)
• Asus Radeon HD 4850 EAH4850 (Catalyst 8.10)

3DMark06 Benchmark Results

3DMark is a computer benchmark by Futuremark (formerly named Mad Onion) to determine the DirectX 9 performance of 3D game performance with graphics cards. 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests.

3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today. Some enthusiasts may note that Benchmark Reviews does not include CPU-bound tests in our benchmark battery, and that only graphic-bound tests are included.

Here at Benchmark Reviews, we believe that synthetic benchmark tools are just as valuable as video games, but only so long as you're comparing apples to apples. Since the same test is applied in the same controlled method with each test run, I believe 3DMark is a very reliable tool for comparing graphic cards against one-another.

More visitors to Benchmark Reviews operate at 1280x1024 resolution than any other, as it represents the native resolution of 19" LCD monitors. Using this resolution as a starting point, the maximum settings were applied to 3dMark06 which for these tests include 8x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering. Low-resolution testing allows the graphics processor to plateau maximum output performance, which thereby shifts demand onto the system components to keep up. At the lower resolutions 3DMark will reflect the GPU's top-end speed in the composite score, indicating full-throttle performance with little load. This makes for a less GPU-dependant test environment, and is helpful in measuring the maximum output performance in the test results.

To start things off, I like to run 3DMark06 at the default settings. The defaults set by Futuremark ensure that results can be compared across systems with some degree of accuracy. In this particular test, the results are exactly as expected. The HD 4830 lands between the HD 4670 and the HD 4850, leaning slightly closer to the latter.

Here we ran the same tests and resolution, but added some anti-aliasing and texture filtering to the mix. These options tax the graphics card, by requiring additional processing power and memory. The HD 4670 clearly has a hard time with this test with its limited 128-bit memory interface. The EAH4830, however, stays close to the 4850.

After increasing the resolution, we see another drop in performance, but not nearly as drastic. The move from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050 results in roughly a 10% drop in performance for the HD 4830 and about 9.5% for the 4850.

This final test represents a worst case scenario for all but those running on the highest resolution WQXGA monitors. At 1920x1200, the HD 4850 offers about 10% better performance than the 4830, while the 4830 offers 33% better performance than the 4670.

Call of Duty 4 Benchmark Results

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare runs on a proprietary game engine that Infinity Ward based off of the tried-and-true Q3 structure. This engine offers features such as true world-dynamic lighting, HDR lighting effects, dynamic shadows and depth of field. "Bullet Penetration" is calculated by the Infinity Ward COD4 game engine, taking into account things such as surface type and entity thickness. Certain objects, such as cars, and some buildings are destructible. This makes distinguishing cover from concealment important, as the meager protection provided by things such as wooden fences and thin walls does not fully shield players from harm as it does in many other games released during the same time period. Bullet speed and stopping power are decreased after penetrating an object, and this decrease is calculated realistically depending on the thickness and surface of the object penetrated.

This version of the game also makes use of a dynamic physics engine, a feature which was not implemented in previous Call of Duty titles for Windows PC's. The new in-game death animations are a combination of pre-set static animations combined with ragdoll physics. Infinity Ward's use of the well-debugged Quake 3 engine along with new dynamic physics implementation allows Call of Duty 4 to be playable by a wide range of computer hardware systems. The performance may be scaled for low-end graphic cards up to 4x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Tri-linear anisotropic texture filtering.

Before I discuss the results, I would like to take a moment to mention my general opinion on Fraps software when it comes to game performance benchmarking. If you're not familiar with the software, Fraps (derived from Frames per second) is a benchmarking, screen capture, and real-time video capture utility for DirectX and OpenGL applications. Some reviewers use this software to measure video game performance on their Windows system, as well as record gaming footage. My opinion is that it offers a valid third-party non-bias alternative to in-game benchmarking tools; but there is one caveat: it's not perfect. Because the user must manually begin the test, the starting point may vary from position to position and therefore skew the results.

In my testing with Fraps v2.9.4 build 7039, I used the cut-scene intro to the coup d'etat scene when Al Asad takes over control. First I allowed the level to load and let the scene begin for a few moments, then I would use the escape key to bring up the menu. Once I selected the restart level option, I would immediately press F11 to begin recording the benchmark data. This scene is nearly four minutes long, but I configured Fraps to record the first 180 seconds of it to remain consistent. Once the scene would end, I would repeat the restart process for a total of five tests. So within a 0.2 second starting point margin, all benchmark results are comparable which is probably as good as it can possibly get with this tool.

Just as we saw in the synthetic 3DMark06 tests, in Call of Duty 4 the EAH4830 offers considerably better performance than the HD 4670. However, it can't quite catch the HD 4850 with its full 800 stream processors and higher GPU frequency. At these resolutions and framerates, though, this performance difference would likely go unnoticed..

Crysis Benchmark Results

Crysis uses a new graphics engine: the CryENGINE2, which is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX10) framework of Windows Vista, but can also run using DirectX9, both on Vista and Windows XP.

Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been re-written to support multi-threading.

Crysis offers an in-game benchmark tool, which is similar to World in Conflict. This short test does place some high amounts of stress on a graphics card, since there are so many landscape features rendered. For benchmarking purposes, Crysis can mean trouble as it places a high demand on both GPU and CPU resources. Benchmark Reviews uses the Crysis Benchmark Tool by Mad Boris to test frame rates in batches, which allows the results of many tests to be averaged.

Low-resolution testing allows the graphics processor to plateau its maximum output performance, which thereby shifts demand onto the other system components. At the lower resolutions Crysis will reflect the GPU's top-end speed in the composite score, indicating full-throttle performance with little load. This makes for a less GPU-dependant test environment, and is helpful in creating a baseline for measuring maximum output performance in the next few test results. At the 1280x1024 resolution used by some newer 17" and most 19" monitors, all of the video cards tested performed at very respectable levels.

Crysis is considered one of the most demanding games on the market, and these results certainly live up to the hype. With the HD 4670, you can forget about running Crysis at high quality and a decent resolution. At higher resolutions, even the HD 4850 is brought to its knees. The HD 4830 doesn't fair any better, running about 13% slower than the 4850. With any of these cards, you'll have to run at a lower resolution or turn off some eye candy to get a decent framerate.

Although we're already bordering on unacceptable framerates, I wanted to see how anti-aliasing would affect these cards in a real game. As we saw in the 3DMark06 benchmarks, throwing anti-aliasing into the mix can often tax the video card more than an increase in resolution. In Crysis, we see this same effect. Taking the EAH4830 from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 resulted in a 19% percent performance drop, while going to 1680x1050 to 1680x1050 with 4x AA resulted in a 26% performance drop. This is something you'll probably want to keep in mind when setting your graphics settings.

Devil May Cry 4 Benchmarks

Devil May Cry 4 is one of the newest additions to Benchmark Reviews' testing suite. Launched in July of this year for the PC, it is also one of the newest games on the market. Fortunately for us, Capcom recognized the community's interest in hardware testing and included a built in benchmarking tool with this game. In fact, it is even included it in the demo. The benchmarking tool runs through four different scene, all of which I highly recommend watching. It's a beautifully detailed game and, as you'll see from our benchmarks, can produce some great framerates even on lower end hardware.

In keeping with our previous tests, the Devil May Cry 4 benchmark will be run at 1280x1024, 1680x1050, and 1920x1200 resolutions. All options are set to high where available, with 4x AA enabled through the in-game options and 16x anisotropic filtering enabled via the catalyst control center. All four scenes are allowed to play through three times, with the first results disregarded and the other two averaged. This proved to produce very reliable results, with an error rate as low as 1-2 FPS.

The four scenes included in the benchmark produced a consistent pattern of framerates. The third scene appears to be the least demanding, while the second and fourth scenes resulted in the lowest frame rates. The EAH4830 performed very well, approaching 94% of the performance of the full-fledged HD 4850. Even the HD 4670 performed well at this resolution, although the 4830 and 4850 offer almost 40% higher framrates.

Increasing the resolution yields similar results. In scene 3, the 4830 and 4850 are nearly matched, however, scene 2 shows the 4850 coming in with a 14% performance lead over the 4830. With framerates this high, however, most people would not be able to tell the difference.

Even at our final test resolution of 1920x1200, the EAH4830 would be indistinguishable from a HD 4850 to the naked eye. The HD 4670, however, is a different story. You'd have to reduce the quality settings or move up to a 4830 to get decent framerates at this resolution.

World in Conflict Results

The latest version of Massive's proprietary Masstech engine utilizes DX10 technology and features advanced lighting and physics effects, and allows for a full 360 degree range of camera control. Massive's MassTech engine scales down to accommodate a wide range of PC specifications, if you've played a modern PC game within the last two years, you'll be able to play World in Conflict.

World in Conflict's FPS-like control scheme and 360-degree camera make its action-strategy game play accessible to strategy fans and fans of other genres... if you love strategy, you'll love World in Conflict. If you've never played strategy, World in Conflict is the strategy game to try.

Based on the test results charted below it's clear that WiC doesn't place a limit on the maximum frame rate (to prevent a waste of power) which is good for full-spectrum benchmarks like ours, but bad for electricity bills. The average frame rate is shown for each resolution in the chart below. World in Conflict just begins to place demands on the graphics processor at the 1920x1280 resolution, so we'll jump ahead for our consensus.

This final benchmark in our testing suite confirms what we've been seeing all along. The HD 4830HD offers about 30% better performance than the 4670. The 4850, on the other hand, leads the 4830 by about 13%. With framerates dipping into the 30's in this benchmark, those extra frames are likely to make a difference. Whether those extra frames justify the cost is something we'll examine a little later in this review.

Asus HD 4830 Power

Life is not as affordable as it used to be, and items such as fuel and electrical energy top the list of resources that have exploded in price over the past few years. Add to this the limit of non-renewable resources compared to demand and you can see that the prices are only going to get worse. Planet Earth is needs our help, and needs it badly. With forests becoming barren of vegetation and snow capped poles quickly turning brown, the technology industry has a new attitude towards suddenly becoming "green". I'll spare you the powerful marketing hype that I get from various manufacturers every day, and get right to the point: your CPU has been doing a lot more to save the planet than your GPU has... at least up until now. Below is a chart with the isolated video card power consumption (not system total) displayed in Watts for each specified test product:

These power consumption results go against all of the trends we've seen so far. Given the 10% performance advantage of the HD 4850, you might expect the EAH4830 to consume less power. However, this clearly isn't the case. In fact, the EAH4830 consumes slightly more power. This could be due to a number of factors, but most likely ATI's binning process that I mentioned earlier. It's possible that the card I received simply required a little more voltage to get the GPU stable. To generalize from these results, though, I would have to test a few more 4830's to confirm that these results are consistent accross other 4830's.

Asus HD 4830 Temperature

Temperature and power consumption tend to be directly proportional. As power consumption increases, the heat output of the video card's components increase as well. Video card manufacturers usually stick to the reference heatsink and fan when a product series launches, but soon after, develop their own cooling solution. These custom cooling solutions can have a big impact, often reducing temperatures by 20-40%. To test cooling performance, Benchmark Reviews makes use of the temperature sensors built into modern video cards. We first measure the video card in an idle 2D windows environment to get the idle reading. We then max out the GPU load using FurMark and record the highest temperature reached in a 30 minute period. It should be noted that the case design and fans can have a large impact on these results, as well as ambient temperature. These tests were conducted using an Antec P180B case, with all fans set to low and an ambient room temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit.

The temperature results look great for the EAH4830. Even though its power consumption is on par with the HD 4850, the EAH4830 is considerably cooler. Asus clearly has a winning heatsink and fan design on this card. Although it comes at the cost of an extra expansion slot beneath the video card, the increased thermal performance is definitely worth it.

Radeon HD 4830 Final Thoughts

Having run the Asus EAH4830 through a full range of benchmarks and tests, I can honestly say I'm impressed. At $100 after rebate from newegg.com, it offers an excellent price/performance ratio. The big question is: where exactly does it fit into the HD 4000 product family? Our testing revealed that the HD 4830 is, on average, 10-12% slower than the HD 4850. On the other hand, it offers a 30-40% performance increase over the HD 4670. Clearly it is worthy of its 4830 model number, but is it right for you?

The first thing to consider when picking a video card is what resolution you plan to game at. If your monitor only goes up to 1280x1024, chances are you can get away the HD 4670, although you may have to turn a few settings down in more demanding games. If you don't want to compromise eye candy, or you plan on running at 1680x1050, then the HD 4830 is the perfect card for you. In fact, it will run all but the most demanding games (Crysis) at 1920x1200 with everything maxed out.

Given the 30-40% performance lead the HD 4830 has over the HD 4670, I'd say it is definitely worth shelling out the extra $30 for the 4830. Whether the 10-12% jump in performance the HD 4850 offers is the worth another $30 is up for debate. In some games that difference might be noticeable, but in most it probably would not. If you really need performance beyond the HD 4830, and want to stay within the ATI family, I'd recommend the HD 4870 or possibly two 4830's in crossfire.

Asus HD 4830 Conclusion

The HD 4830 series of video cards proved to be a worthy addition to the Radeon HD 4000 product family. With prices reaching below $100, it fills an important price point for the Holiday shopping season. Those looking at the HD 4600 series would be wise to give the HD 4830 serious look as it offers a considerable performance increase.

Our test card, the EAH4830, came to us from Asus in a colorful, well-designed package, free from harm. Asus also maintains an excellent website showcasing their products, although at the time of this review, any mention of the EAH4830 has been absent from the US product pages. I was able to find a news release announcing its launch, but with the product already on the market, I recommend Asus get a product page up as soon as possible. On the plus side, the EAH4830 is listed on the support section of the Asus website. Finding updated drivers was easy, and thanks to some serious bandwidth from Asus, I was able to download drivers in a matter of seconds, not minutes like some other manufacturer websites out there.

Out of the packaging, the EAH4830 takes on a classic red and black color scheme. The heatsink and fan design is attractive, but not overstated. Overall, it's a great looking card, although chances are most people will be more interested in the visuals it can produce as opposed to the way it looks.

As with most Asus products, the EAH4830 is very well constructed. The heatsinks were firmly attached, with no noticeable movement or flex. Asus went with high quality capacitors, mosfets, chokes, and EMI shielding. All add up to great construction quality, which equates to better stability and a higher overclocking threshold.

Once in our test system, the EAH4830 performed admirably. With the stream processors reduced by 20% and clock speed down 50MHz compared to the HD 4850, I expected performance to suffer substantially. In all of our tests, however, the EAH4830 offered framerates close to the 4850, only differing an average of 10-12%. The factory overclocked memory certainly helped, and overclocking the GPU could easily close this gap. The only knock I have against this card is the lower performance per watt, with power consumption on par with the higher performing HD 4850. Fortunately, the Asus designed heatsink and fan helps keep the heat produced by this power consumption in check.

Although our price comparison tool has found a few retailers selling the ASUS 4830, only one offers the best deal. As of November 2008, you can buy the EAH4830 from NewEgg for under $100 (after MIR of course); otherwise the price is $119.99. At this price, the EAH4830 is an exceptional value, although I would have liked to see a DVI-HDMI adapter and crossfire bridge included.

Out of all the 4830's currently on the market, the EAH4830 from Asus offers the best factory clock speeds and performance. At its current price, it is also one of the best deals out there. If you're looking for a mid-range video card, the EAH4830 deserves some serious consideration.

Pros:

+ Excellent price/performance ratio
+ Factory overclocked RAM
+ Improved cooling with Asus HSF
+ High quality power components

Cons:

- No DVI-HDMI adapter
- No crossfire bridge included
- Same power consumption as HD 4850

Ratings:

• Presentation: 9.00
• Appearance: 9.25
• Construction: 9.50
• Functionality: 8.50
• Value: 8.75

Final Score: 9.0 out of 10.

Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.

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