It seems that, at the moment, ATI is releasing fantastic graphics cards on a month-by-month basis. Now, it’s the turn of a part that’s been designed to sit between the Radeon HD 4670 and HD 4850 in ATI’s comprehensive line-up: the HD 4830.

The specifications reveal that, while the 4830 isn’t as powerful on paper as the 4850, it’s still a powerful GPU in its own right. A core clock speed of 575MHz is only 50MHz lower than the 4850, and 512MB of 900MHz GDDR3 memory certainly hints at the new card’s potential.

Our gaming benchmarks proved that, while this may be the least powerful 4800 series card available, the 4830 is still no slouch. Our medium-quality Crysis benchmark was despatched at 59fps, with the game only becoming unplayable at high settings, with the 4830 struggling to 22fps. Still, it’s an encouraging result – the 4850 could only manage 10fps more in the same test, and the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT could only manage 23fps.

Further tests revealed that the 4830 is capable with a wide range of titles. A score of 60fps in our high-quality Call of Duty 4 benchmark and 34fps in the demanding, medium-quality DirectX 10 Call of Juarez test prove that, despite its budget-ish positioning, the 4830 is no mere media card.

Aside from excellent performance, the best thing about the new 4830 is the price. It can be had for £76 exc. VAT from microdirect.co.uk – an astonishing price, especially considering that this is a card that can handle, well, any modern titles with little compromise on quality. Prices may change – especially given the current economic climate – but we can’t see them fluctuating too far, and at least not far enough to make this suddenly become a bad purchase.

Our only concern is that, with Radeon HD 4850 prices falling below £100, it may be worth cutting your losses, spending £20 more and investing in that card instead, as there’s a significant performance boost to be had. If you don’t want to splash that much cash, though, this is a fantastic compromise – and another solid GPU from ATI.