HIS Radeon HD 4830 512MB video card review

After so long in the 3D graphics industry wilderness relatively speaking, it's been great to see AMD back on form and throwing out truly competitive parts into the GPU market - First the Radeon HD 4850 took on and beat the GeForce 9800 GTX, then the Radeon HD 4870 showed the GeForce GTX 260 the door, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 blazed new trails in the enthusiast segment and the Radeon HD 4670 had plenty to offer at its own mainstream price point.

However, a few successes from the red team (if you can call them that any more, I suppose it should almost be "the other green team") doesn't mean that it's game over by any stretch of the imagination, even for this current generation of boards, and indeed AMD have clearly been aware that there are a few small gaps in their product stack that need filling.  One of those gaps is the lack of competition for NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GT SKU, and it's that particular crack in the veneer that the company are looking to plaster over today with the launch of a new Radeon HD 4800 series board.

AMD have used recent months well to leverage the superior die size and process technology of their RV770 core against the competition in pricing terms, and the release of the Radeon HD 4830 today sees them play another of their cards in the form of on-chip redundancy, using chips with some of their SIMD cores disabled in hardware to increase the yield of usable chips while also allowing them to market at a lower price point.  To both celebrate and investigate this launch, we'll be taking an in-depth look at one Radeon HD 4830 board from HIS, complete with custom cooling solution.  Can it outstrip the GeForce 9800 GT to keep in tow with the rest of the Radeon HD 4800 family?  Read on to find out.