MSI Radeon HD 4830 512MB OC Video Card Review

Folding@Home, and Conclusion

Being a Member of Team 38296 in Stanford’s Distributed Computing Project Folding@Home, I’d feel like I wasn’t giving you the whole picture if I didn’t at least mention how the HD4830 fared. Running at stock speed, the card was able to crunch out a step in about 2m 55s, compared to 1m 31s or so for MSI’s GeForce 9800GT that we recently reviewed. So, the card is capable of contributing some work units to the Folding@Home Project, albeit as a slower pace than other cards in this price range.

Conclusion:

The HD4830 from MSI holds up quite well in all of the current games and benchmarks we threw at it. The only chink in it’s armor was a bit of a hit in shader model 2 tests in 3DMark 2006, though the card was able to shine bright in the current 3DMark Vantage where shader model 4 comes into play. Overclocking seems effortless on this sub-$125 offering from MSI, and even when we pushed it to 700MHz GPU and 1000MHz Memory clocks (up from 585MHz and 900MHz). The custom cooler was able to keep things cool and quiet never venturing north of 43C or getting loud enough that the fan was even noticeable. The little touches like the MSI logo in the slot cover add some finishing touches on a “budget” video card that you wouldn’t expect. The street price on the MSI Radeon HD 4830 is $134.99 plus shipping at Mwave, but there is a $30 mail-in-rebate. That makes the final price on the card just $104.99 plus shipping, which isn’t bad at all for what the card has to offer. Be sure to check out the latest CATALYST 8.12 drivers if you get one of these cards as it has the new ATI AVIVO Video Converter software included for free. All said and done MSI gives you a fine video card at the right price with the Radeon HD 4830.

Bottom Line: MSI comes through again with a well designed graphics card to fill a hard fought spot in the battle for your gaming dollars. With an excellent showing in Call of Duty 4 and Crysis Warhead, the Radeon HD4830 from MSI is definitely worth taking a look at.