PowerColor AX4830 512MD3 Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: BEST 60.00 CARD YOU CAN GET AT THE TIME - THE 4870 WAS ON SALE FOR THIS PRICE DURING THE BLACK FRIDAY SALE AND SPANKS THIS CARD. GREAT DX 10 CARD. 56FPS IN JUST CAUSE 2

Cons: SOME GAMES DO FREEZE, BUT ONLY AFTER A COUPLE OF HOURS OF PLAY (OVERHEATING?) SO WHY ARE YOU'LL PLAYING FOR MORE THAN A COUPLE OF HOURS ANYWAYS - GET OUT AND GET SOME EXCERCISE YOU FATTYS. UNINSTALLING ALL ATI PRDUCTS AND REINSTALLING THE DRIVERS FIXED ALL THE TEARING ARTIFACTING PROBLEMS I WAS HAVING - NEED TO CROSSFIRE WITH ON-BOARD GRAPHICS CARD

Pros: other then its a 256 bit. no other pros

Cons: card lasted a hole 2 months before it started acting up, blackouts, shared problems, lines thru the screen ...

Other Thoughts: Can not blame power color, or NEWEGG.
But gotta blam, thge testers before the card is sent out, from power color.. FAIL job on testing .....
i gave it 3 eggs,
2 eggs to newegg, for the time on shipping, would be more, but gotta split the eggs, in to areas . 2 eggs, should be 5 eggs for shipping, and ordering ect ect. for NEW EGG.

1 egg to power color, they do have some nice cards. but the other two eggs, would have gone to power color, if i would give them, but, seems they dropped the ball, on the testing, and when you call in for a RMA, thye take your number and call you back. when they can, also when you try to do a RMA on line, you cant, with out a .GIF file. sucks when you dont have a scanner ... to scan you order information from new egg........ FAIL

Pros: Fast for the price, AMD/ATI have improved their drivers. quiet

Cons: High Heat, Heat spreader to small thinner then a dvd case. causing noneffective heat transfer.
have to down clock the gpu to 350mhz to get it stable

Other Thoughts: we got 2 and 1 would not work right on 2d things such as movies or pictures without the screen turning black and freezing the PC the other has a issue playing games


you would be better off buying something slower for then same price(ATI 4670) or the ATI Radeon 5670 for about 20$ more. sense it would be stable!!
believe me there selling this cheap for a reason(its about 5% slower then the ATI 4850 which cost 100$+)

Manufacturer Response:

The cooling unit on this card is more than adequate for the amount of heat it generates. I think something else might be causing issues. If you shoot me an e-mail I'll be more than happy to help you out. My e-mail is hugo@powercolor.com, thanks.

-Hugo

Pros: Runs great on Crysis 2 , etc..

Cons: Often crashes when Minecraft is being played. It would say that the ATI driver device has crashed and recovered etc... Please tell me if the card is glitchy or the game THANK YOU.

Manufacturer Response:

The only way to know if it's a problem with the game or the card is to play more and more games. If Crysis 2 and OTHER games work well, and it's ONLY Minecraft causing a problem, then chances are the problem exists in Minecraft. If you e-mail me I can help you further. My e-mail is hugo@powercolor.com, thanks.

-Hugo

Pros: There probably would be some pros to this card if I was able to use it.

Cons: came DOA

Other Thoughts: A piece looked as if it was broken off.

Manufacturer Response:

Please shoot me an e-mail at hugo@powercolor.com if you can. I'd like to go over what was missing, or what broke off, if you don't mind. I can also help you if you need assistance with a replacement. Thanks.

-Hugo

Pros: cheap

Cons: Purchased 2 of these because the MFG claims this video card is crossfire ready, and has a bridge cable included. This card doesn't even have a bridge cable port. These cards will more than likely be returned for a video card made by a different MFG that is actually truthful about what their card is capable of.

Other Thoughts: Time completely wasted with this card, if you want to run crossfire, DO NOT buy this card. You will be disapointed.

Manufacturer Response:

This card supports a form of Crossfire that doesn't require the use of a Crossfire bridge. There is certain motherboard recommendations in order for this to work, so that might be why you weren't able to get it to function. A lot of motherboard manufacturers have also released BIOS updates to unlock this feature. Either way I can certain try to help you, so feel free to e-mail me at hugo@powercolor.com, thanks.

-Hugo

Pros: easy overclock, easy install, when it works it works good

Cons: constantly crashing and glitching pixelating etc

Other Thoughts: good thing it was cheap

Manufacturer Response:

Crashing and glitching? Are you overclocking the card? If you're overclocking it then you might want to back down the overclock a little to see if the crashing and glitching goes away. This card has a pretty good cooler, but this model GPU was never a great overclocker so you want to be extremely generous with how high you try and go. If you have any further question you can e-mail me at hugo@powercolor.com, thanks.

-Hugo

Pros: Cheap

Cons: Ordered 2 of these cards expecting to be able to set up crossfire on a new PC Im building for my brother. Box/Specs claim this product supports Crossfire, and that the crossfire bridge is included. The bridge cable IS NOT included, after reading through numerous forums there was no way to set up crossfire through the motherboard/catalyst. After going to the mfg web site, they actually offer three different versions of this same card. 2 of which actually have crossfire bridge cable ports, this card does not. Numerous reviews claim that they were unable to use crossfire with this specific card. No support line, live chat or email addresses are disclosed on the website other than FAQ.

Other Thoughts: On their site under the specifications this is written by the mfg: "The entire information provided herein are for reference only. PowerColor reserves the right to modify or revise the content at anytime without prior notice." These words are not very comforting when deciding where to bring your business.

Manufacturer Response:

This card does support Crossfire, the only problem is that because it lacks the bridges, not all motherboards support this version of Crossfire. We also have a BIOS update that could potentially fix your issue, but again that would depend on whether your motherboard supports this form of Crossfire or not. If you send me an e-mail I'll be more than happy to try and help you out. My e-mail is hugo@powercolor.com, thanks.

-Hugo

Pros: Runs so many games on ultra
256-bit interface
Very Cheap

Cons: Died within a month. Was working perfectly one second, and then my screen went black. When I restarted my computer, my bios screen had red pixels all over, and after I logged onto my account, the screen went black again. Powercolor's support is terrible. It took me forever to find a number, and when I called it, nobody picked up. Pretty weird.

Other Thoughts: I was thinking my card was just an anomaly, but there are a lot of other comments about the card dying. I wish nvidia had cards this cheap; I would get one of those in a heartbeat.

Manufacturer Response:

Sorry about the problem you're experiencing with your card. If you send me an e-mail at hugo@powercolor.com I can assist you in getting an RMA setup so we can replace your card. Thanks.

-Hugo

Pros: Well, here's some pros:
16 ROP's
256-bit memory bus
512MB of GDDR3
at stock clocks has around 42Gb/s of memory bandwidth
640 5-D stream processors

At stock clocks this card is pretty good for the price, but if you have a decent power supply get the overclocking tool from guru3D and overclock it. Overclocked I've seen some amazing stuff out of this card. Bulletstorm plays maxed at 1080p with every video option maxed. Crysis plays at 1080p on med-high VERY fluently. Batman Arkham Asylum plays maxed at 1080p buttery smooth. Gears of War plays buttery smooth at 1080p. Also COD:MW2 plays smooth as glass at 1080p completely maxed out. Bioshock, Bioshock2, Deadspace, Deadspace2, NFS Hot Pursuit, Borderlands... they all run completely maxed out with at least 30FPS+.

Cons: Runs a bit warm sometimes. The overclocking tool from guru3D will let you manually set the fan to be 100% while gaming. You do need good case ventilation though. This is the version of the 4830 with 700MHz spec GDDR3 instead of 1GHz, so that may sway your opinion, but overclocked it's no issue though. Another thing to remember when buying this is to have at least a 450W power supply, especially if you plan on overclocking. They mean that, and you'll notice it if you don't. Also, your power supply needs a 6-pin PCIe power connector, as this card's TDP is about 150W.

Other Thoughts: This score means nothing, but Windows rates it's performance as 7.3 for both desktop aero and gaming graphics. Also, my machine is spec'd here:

AMD Phenom X4 9750 Quad
8GB of DDR2
PCIe 2.0 X16
CCC 11.4 preview
Windows 7 X64