AMD Radeon HD 4670: Ruling from Top to Bottom
by Derek Wilson on September 10, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Non-G DDR3? Sure, Why Not
For a while now we've been seeing either DDR2 or GDDR3 on most graphics cards. The future standard looks to be GDDR5 at this point (with 4 being skipped due to its not-that-much-better-ness when compared to GDDR3), but currently board makers are faced with an interesting situation: DDR3 is coming down in price due to its adoption on the desktop.
The push to GDDR3 was to fill the need in the graphics industry for faster DRAM, so it came along a little ahead of DDR3 and has served us well for the past few years. DDR3 is now finding traction in the desktop world and prices are starting to come down as every major platform will support DDR3 going forward. Performance is apparently fairly similar at the speeds DDR3 can hit (we don't really have a way of testing this ourselves right now, but this is what AMD is telling us), so price is really the only differentiator.
The future: GDDR5 at the high end and DDR3 at the low end for graphics cards
Cheaper DRAM means cheaper boards, especially on the low end where we won't see really high speeds where GDDR3 or GDDR5 would be required. This is a good thing as it will hopefully bring performance down to the mainstream faster.
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strikeback03 - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
Plus, there is the fact that CRTs blurred everything. The LCD image is so much sharper (at native resolution) that jaggies are much more apparent.razor2025 - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
4670 looks to be a great low-mid range card. I've been wanting to get a slimline PC, but the current choices in low-profile GPUs are still lacking. Sure there's the 9600GT low-profile, but that requires 400watt PSU and it's already a hot card in full-length form. If there's a 4670 low-profile, I'd buy it in a heartbeat as long as they keep it under $80.As for the review itself, it was terribly written. AT articles seems to be on a decline in recent times. Horrible graph choices and questionable writings. Also, a entire page dedicated to talking about a competitor's product. How low can we go AT? Oh and when can we have a decent motherboard roundup? You know, the one that was promised since last summer (when 690G came out)?
Pale Rider - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
<<<<<< Now, if we could get a 3870 for about $100 (a 9600 GT fits the bill here, as 3870 cards can't be found for that price), >>>>>>>This is just flat out misleading information.
djfourmoney - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Okay honesty is the best policy time -When a co-worker wanted to purchase a new PC, he consulted me. I told him to "future proof" himself and get a Quad Core. Being a parent of 2 children and the only one working in the household, he can't afford to upgrade every 2-3 years like hardcore gamers, power users, overclockers.
Now its your typical $900-1000 Dell and of course he could have gotten equal performance for much less if he DIY'ed it. Let's be honest people, when you consider there's still an intimidation factor with any electronics let alone PC's which seem to crash on their own (of course that's not always true either) you can understand that most people value pre-builts and being able to call up Dell tech support if something happens.
At least when benchmarking, they should use not only the most powerful system they can find, but use one that a typical end-user would have and that's slow speed dual cores and even late of era single core CPU's like the Pent D and AMD 64's.
I bought my Dell back in 2003, I didn't build a new system until I found I couldn't get more out of my old system, that was about 8 months ago (2008). So five years between systems and if wanted to watch HD content the regular way, my old Dell was just fine the way it was and did play HD@720p without issue.
This new system is middle of the road in terms of power and crushes most PC's between $600-700 available from HP/Compaq or Dell (3.1Ghz 5000+ BE).
My point is, that most people don't have PC's with $200-$1200 GPU's and couldn't fathom spending $500 for a video card, not even $200, $100 is the threshold for most people and that's pushing it, only 20somethings and teens would even think its "reasonable" for gaming performance to spend $100 on a card.
I'll go ahead and do what all these other sites aren't doing, I'll give you a user review of the HD 4670 on a basic system (Dell 530) on a 19" LCD, depends when I get one. Currently only New Egg has it and I won't be able to order until Friday.
If you have a modern CPU, with only a 128-bit bus, I doubt an older dual core or even a single core would bottleneck performance. It really depends on what games you play. FPS are more GPU dependent than CPU. Racing games because of physics and AI tend to use a fair amount of CPU power, which is why GRID recommends 3.0Gz single cores but on Bit Tech they tried it with both a single core and dual core and it clearly ran faster with a dual core CPU.
tacoburrito - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Seriously, does people really expect a $79 card to perform anywhere near the level of a $180 card, i.e. the 4850? AMD would be stupid to do that. If that happens, who would want to buy the 4850 or 4870? AMD crippled the 4670's performance for a reason, i.e. not to cannabalize the sales of its higher end cards.The0ne - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
This article could be one that girls/women would avoid. Just seeing the term "epic fail" is already a turn off for me. Just seem so childish and in the same terminology I guess, childish for a review.Laura Wilson - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
ok i'm a girl/woman and my favorite part of this article was the term "epic fail," but perhaps i'm stunted in my fifth grade humor...Pale Rider - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
I agree. What are we in the 5th grade? I bet the neffers in OT love it.Pale Rider - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Once again AT has an ATI review that has an entire page reserved for nVidia product information. Every ATi review we get from AT seems to have an entire page dedicated to nVidia products. Funny how the nVidia reviews NEVER have entire pages dedicated to ATi products.KikassAssassin - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
That's because with every ATI release, nVidia scrambles to put out a new (usually re-hashed) part as an answer to ATI's new product, so the review sites naturally compare the two cards together. ATI doesn't have OCD about putting out a direct answer to every single product their competitor releases like nVidia does, so review articles on nVidia products don't usually have anything new from ATI to talk about.You can't blame the review sites for this one. They're just reporting on what the companies are doing. Instead, blame nVidia for saturating the market with a ridiculous number of redundant products.