Retesting the Radeon HD 4830: Too Few SIMDs Enabled

Final Words

Well this has been a first. We never see review hardware that shows worse performance than we can expect: companies are always trying to pump things up when they send them to us. For instance, we very often get overclocked versions of graphics cards rather than the stock versions. I can't count the number of times I've had to re-run tests after discovering that I needed to underclock the review sample.

While the discrepancy isn't as large as it could have been, it does seem to have affected DX10 or shader intensive DX9 more heavily.

After re-running all of our test, we updated the original article with the new charts and data. The final conclusion really doesn't change that much, but we did tweak things a little bit. There will still be a heavy emphasis on price and finding the lowest one possible when deciding between the Radeon HD 4830 and the GeForce 9800 GT. But the Radeon 4830 does look a little better in this new light and there is less of a threat from the myriad overclocked 9800 GT versions.

The performance of the Radeon HD 4830 pushes up a little closer to the Radeon HD 4850, and that's a good thing as well. The 4850 is a great option, and for those who can spend the money to pick one up we recommend it. But the point of introducing lower priced models with good performance is to provide for those who can't afford the higher end hardware. For those who can't afford more than a Radeon HD 4830 (which can be had for as low as $110 after mail in rebate if you shop for it), AMD has provided hardware that is much more capable under current games than what we are used to seeing at this price point.

Today, for gamers with 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 sized monitors, the 4830 will provide a quality experience with maximum settings in most current games. The advantage of the Radeon 4850 will be that it could provide a bit more longevity with the capability to run higher settings in future games. While that is desirable it is very hard to predict what future games will perform like on any hardware.

We can sort of look at it like a game console. The hardware is capable of a certain quality level and resolution and while quality may improve a bit with experience over time, it is limited at a certain threshold. Your current and future games will always look as good as they look today, but the advancement in other games will make the cool new effects that are around now look much dimmer by comparison. What you know you are getting when you purchase a Radeon HD 4830 is hardware that will be capable of delivering at least the visual fidelity you see on these current games with resolutions and settings we tested. And that's pretty darn good if you ask us.