| Sapphire Radeon HD4830 512MB Graphics Card
|
The Basics (continued):
The below left image shows an angled view from the end of the card where the monitor connections are found. Here we find a pair of DVI connections surrounding a TV-out connection. The below right image shows an angled view from the other end of the card where we see that a single 6-pin PCI Express power connection is tucked into one corner.
 
Overall the appearance is simple, but well done. There is nothing overly fancy about it, but the key components are in place to hint that it just might be capable of some serious performance.
Configuration:
A system with the following components was used to test the Sapphire Radeon HD4830 512MB graphics card:
» ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution X48 ATX motherboard
» Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 dual core processor (at 3.2GHz)
» G.Skill 4GB DDR3-1600 Pi Series dual channel memory kit (at 1600MHz and 7-7-7-18)
» OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU cooler
» Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» TSST Super WriteMaster optical drive
» Nesteq EECS 700 Watt ultra quiet power supply
All tests were conducted in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium SP1, and Catalyst Control Center 8.10 was used for testing purposes.
The screenshot below takes a look at GPU-Z and the Catalyst Control Center Overdrive tab in order to get some information on the card. You may notice that the system is actually running in Windows XP for this image, and that some of the data in GPU-Z is incomplete, while other data is just crazy. It looked the same way in Vista, and I figured I would try XP just to see if it looked any different (which it didn't). The GPU actually runs at 575MHz and the memory runs at 900MHz, as shown on the Overdrive tab. The ridiculously high values shown in GPU-Z were actually dynamic, and would go from four digits to five digits as I watched.
Switching between CCC 8.10 and 8.11 in Vista and XP didn't help, and I am left wondering if something wasn't right with the card or with GPU-Z. As testing progressed I discovered that the card worked just fine, and this oddity became a non-issue to me.
Although it couldn't overclock like GPU-Z may indicate, there was plenty of room for improvement using just the sliders on the Overdrive tab of the Catalyst Control Center. It is usually quite easy to max out a card here, and this is the first time I was not able to completely. Don't consider that a shortcoming, as the range was really pretty large. The stock GPU speed is 575MHz, with a maximum of 700MHz on the Overdrive tab. This value was achieved, and load temperatures remained acceptable.
It was the memory side of things where the overclock peaked before the slider reached the high limit. The stock memory speed is 900MHz, and the slider goes all the way up to 1200MHz. I found that it wasn't stable at that speed, even when idle, and that just over 1100MHz was the usable maximum. Regardless, we're talking about roughly a 22% overclock on the memory (and the GPU), which is quite respectable. Improve the memory cooling, and who knows what might happen.
|
|
|
|
