2 - The Radeon HD 4830 GPU
The Radeon HD 4830 GPU.
The 4830 cards are equipped with the RV770LE silicon, which is a spin-off from the RV770 chip that we know from the 4850/4870 cards, it comes with a 256-bit memory interface and as stated will go head to head with the GeForce 9800 GT.
Realistically speaking .. the 4830 cards are a cut down version of the 4850. Here's the thing; much like with NVIDIA's GPUs, the shaders are organized in clusters. The RV770 (Radeon 4850/4870) has 800 Shader processors which as you could have learned by now are organized in 5 clusters. The new RV770 4830 GPU has one of these clusters disabled.
- Radeon 4850 = 160x5= 800 shader processors.
- Radeon 4830 = 160x4= 640 shader processor
As you can see, one cluster is disabled. It's would not be totally illogical that when producing the RV770 some chips didn't make the original yield and one cluster is thus defective. With a laser cut AMD then can simply disable it. As simple as that. We confirmed with AMD that this is a hardware cut, not something you can en/disable at BIOS level ;)
The RV770LE aka 4830 graphics card will come with 512MB of memory and will have 640 stream processors. Though the AIBs will be able to produce these boards themselves, you can expect clock frequencies to hover at this level:
- Core/Shader clock frequency 575 MHz
- Memory clock frequency 1800 MHz (effective)
So just judging from the specifications, pricing wise the card should fit well in a position below Radeon HD 4850 and above HD 4670. And yes, that same judgment tells me that the Radeon HD 4830 is expected to fight the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT and GeForce 9600GT cards. The HD 4830 will require a minimum 450W PSU and will be compatible with ATI CrossFireX. It will have built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support and come with a Blu-ray decoder which is standard for the Series 4000 products.
The ATI Radeon HD 4830 is launching today, October 21st. Pricing is, as stated, sub-$150; expect pricing is roughly 129 USD.
|
ATI Radeon |
ATI Radeon |
ATI Radeon HD 4670 |
ATI Radeon HD 3870 | |
| # of transistors |
956 million |
956 million |
514 million | 666 million |
|
Stream Processing Units |
800 |
640 |
320 | 320 |
|
Clock speed |
625 MHz |
575 MHz |
750 MHz | 775+ MHz |
|
Memory Clock |
2000 MHz GDDR3 (effective) |
1800 MHz GDDR3 (effective) |
2.0 GHz GDDR3 (effective) | 2.25 GHz GDDR3 (effective) |
|
Math processing rate (Multiply Add) |
1000 GigaFLOPS |
740 GigaFLOPS |
480 GigaFLOPS | 497+ GigaFLOPS |
|
Texture Units |
40 |
32 |
32 | 16 |
|
Render back-ends |
16 |
16 |
16 | 16 |
|
Memory |
512MB GDDR3 |
512MB GDDR3 |
512MB GDDR3 | 512MB GDDR3/4 |
|
Memory interface |
256-bit |
256-bit |
128-bit | 256-bit |
|
Fabrication process |
55nm |
55nm |
55nm | 55nm |
|
Power Consumption (peak) |
~110W |
~110W |
~59W | ~105W |
HIS Radeon HD 4830
We will today have a peek at an offering from HIS. Clock wise this is a reference product, however it comes with a nice blue PCB and a custom cooler. Since the package was sent out in a rush towards us, there was no original box. Just the card. But you can expect the usuals bundling wise
When we look at the PCB of the card, we immediately spot that the layout is different, this is a customized blue colored PCB, that hopefully will yield some good overclocking results as well. You can expect roughly a 110-120 Watts peak power consumption. At a 129 USD introduction price, we expect this to be a very competitive product on the market. Last thing I need to mention, included in the box are:
Bundled we see the following:
- DVI to VGA Dongle x 1
- Crossfire bridge x 1
- Manual
- Driver CD
It's a bit unfortunate, but HIS stripped away the HDMI adapter and their multi purpose LED/Screwdriver to save on overall costs. At this pricing level, it's understandable though.
