Just last week ATI launched their newest card in the 4800 series of cards, the Radeon HD 4830. Since ATI improved their game incredibly with launching cards when they're ready in stores this has also cut down the time on non-reference cards hitting the market. These cards are out there now and today we have one to look at from Sapphire in their new Radeon HD 4830 card.

This Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 is very similar to some of their 4850 cards and other 4000 series cards as it features a blue PCB with their custom and large heatsink. This heatsink is visually very appealing but also drops the temperatures on a standard 4830 card dramatically. We've been saying since the launch of the 4800 series of cards the one major problem with all of them is that the heat is just far too high. This card ran at around 38 degrees Celsius for us and that's here in Texas! Easily the coolest running 4800 cards we've seen so far. When the card was maxed we topped out at 53 degrees Celsius. The card was very touchable unlike the other reference ATI 4800 cards. Our stock 4830 for reference at idle was already at 52 degrees Celsius and reached around 90 degrees Celsius. Of course this card is a dual slot card as the larger heatsink and fan extends out from the card but we think that tradeoff is more than worth it for the comfort of knowing your video card isn't getting too hot. I've personally had too many crashes in Crysis: Warhead from stock ATI 4000 series cards for my liking.

 Not much else is different from other 4830 cards but not much else has to be. Sapphire's standard bundle is included here, DVI-to-VGA adapter, component cables, PCI-Express to Molex adapter, DVI-to-HDMI adapter, case sticker, and installation CD. The main feature set from the 4000 series of cards is here, second-gen 55nm manufacturing process, DX 10.1 support, CrossfireX technology, PowerPlay for energy savings, UVD2 for H.264 decoding, 7.1 audio output over HDMI. The major difference between the 4850 and 4830 is that the number of stream processors sees a drop from 800 to 640 and the clockspeed is lowered. That's about all so we shouldn't see a major shift in performance either which is quite good sine 4830 cards should be from $100-130.

Here are the specs on the various Radeon 4800 cards.