Have you read http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... ht=#434832 ?

I don't care if a Nvidia 8xxx or 9xxx card is $10 more or $10 less. I don't need the hassle of a warranty return.

I am building a new PC and would like to use it for casual gaming and also as a PVR. So I am looking at ATI cards due to the on-board HDMI audio capabilities.
I was getting ready to get a HD 3850 card but then read in your review that the HDMI audio does not work. Does it work on the HD4830? I would rather pay a little more and get something that works.
Thanks,
-Henry

Are you talking about the 8-channel LPCM audio over HDMI? It definitely works on the HD 4670s.

so, what's the final verdict on the power draw of these 4830's? If they only consume slightly more than a 3870 with 640SPs enabled, that's great. Is that the case? I do remember reading in one of the reviews the mention of the source of the 4830 gpu. Some are failed parts, others are disabled. Some of the failed parts need more voltage, or some of the SP blocks weren't up to par. So, this implies power draw for these cards will vary. I'd still like to know for sure the specifications of the card SPCR reviewed.

I'm in the lab right now and I still can't tell how many SP are active in our sample. GPU-Z reports 800. I assumed it was 560 and attempted to flash it with the 640 BIOS but I can't get ATIFlash to boot properly on any of the available systems we have in the lab. Strangely it worked fine on my laptop at home.

Did you try the updated version of GPU-Z?
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/155 ... /GPU-Z.exe


Atiflash doesn't work? Windows or DOS? If @ Windows, Have you tried running it from a boot floppy *shudders* or a boot thumb drive?

Yeah that's the version of GPU-Z I'm using. I'm trying ATIFlash using a bootable CD. I'm not sure how much extra time I want to invest investigating this... we've got bigger fish to fry atm.

As far as I can tell this is still up in the air. It appears no one will be willing to settle this issue before Christmas.

With any luck we'll see a definitive answer to this sometime in 2009.

I think the power draw of these cards, particularly at idle, is going to vary wildly between manufacturers and I doubt many (any?) will match that of the reference card reviewed at SPCR. This has nothing (or very little) to do with disabled SPs though. I have yet to see any reference designs in retail, they are all redesigned to reduce cost and create a price differential from the 4850 (apart from the GPU itself, I can't see what's cheaper about the reference 4830 v the reference 4850). One obvious place to save cost is components involved with power and voltage regulation. Less effecient power handling is a likely result, along with less aggressive Powerplay BIOS settings for underclocking and undervolting at idle.

The power draw was an issue for me, but I realised that I am not going to see meaningful power consumption comparisons for all the different brands of card available in retail against the reference design. I could easily end up with one like the Powercolor that consumes almost as much as the 4850.

In the end I gave up and ordered a 4670 instead.