AMD Radeon HD 4670: Ruling from Top to Bottom
by Derek Wilson on September 10, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Radeon HD 4670 vs. Last Year's $200 Offerings: The 3870/3850 Revisited
This is an interesting comparison. We included the 3850 in our 9500 GT article, as it was a fairly popular part that had fallen to $100. This time around we throw in the 3870 in order to see how the reduced clock speed and architectural changes impact performance. Let's take a look at the mayhem.
The 4670 really takes the 3850 to task under Crysis with medium settings. Impressively, the 4670 stays above 30 fps at 1920x1200 and does a fair job of paralleling the performance of the 3870 at about a 10fps deficit after 1280x1024.
Our Enemy Territory benchmark has everything maxed out plus a little 4x antialiasing action. At low res, the 4670 actually leads the pack here. This is quite impressive and is our first inkling that maybe our hope about AA performance will prevail. The increased ROP power of the 4670 might also have an impact here, but either way this isn't a bad showing.
Both the 3870 and 3850 lead the 4670 in Oblivion with ultra high defaults and no AA. The 4670 remains playable up through 1680x1050, which is quite nice. But nothing really interesting happens until we consider what happens when we flick on the AA switch.
With 4xAA and 16xAF enabled, the tables are turned and the 4670 jumps on top. Staying barely playable at 1680x1050 with 4xAA (we'd still recommend dropping back to 1280x1024 though), the 4670 certainly looks to be on pace for delivering mainstream hardware with usable AA for resolutions that really need it while running at high quality settings.
With Age of Conan, 1024x768 is really the highest res we can manage on the 4670 with high quality. The card performs similarly to the 3850 here.
While AoC and GRID are ruled by the 4850 and 4870, the 4670 does lag the 3800 series cards. The game is still incredibly playable at 1280x1024 and we'll have to explore AA in this game a little later on as well.
Last is a look at Crysis with high quality settings (and very high quality shaders). This is a tough benchmark and we only compared the 4670 against the 3870 here. The 4670 can't quite attain playability at 1280x1024 either. Looks like something between medium and high quality would suit the 4670 best.
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FishTankX - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
I think this is the only article i've ever seen that uses the term 'Epic fail' in the conclusion.piroroadkill - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Eh, don't be so elitist and stuffy, if the article is good - and it is - then it doesn't really matter.n00bxqb - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Same here ... I approve of this term :)As for the HD 4670, keep in mind that this WILL make its way into MAINSTREAM computers (i.e. Dells and HPs), which is a very good thing. The 9600 GSO and 9600 GT probably won't find a home in these PCs because, let's face it, those cards at the $100 price-point aren't high margin and Nvidia and their partners aren't going to be able to offer the kind of substantial discount to OEMs like they can on items like the HD 4670 and 9500 GT.
Also, given the low power consumption, I could see this making its way into laptops soon as well in the $700-$1000 price range.
This will be good not only for your uneducated mainstream computer buyer, but it will also be good for AMD, which really needs it right now, and the PC gaming industry, which also really needs increased demand right now, too.
fri2219 - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Not to mention "loose" in place of the word lose...Terrible review, even worse writing.
This isn't up to Anandtech standards.
Megaknight - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Why is it a terrible review? Beacause it shows Nvidia sells old technology like it was new and screws the less informed people?regnez - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Well, we certainly look forward to your review of this card in the very near future, then. Or at the very least, some constructive criticism. If you cannot provide either of those, how about you just STFU?Also, I would not be surprised to see this card in an iMac refresh, courtesy of its low-power/decent performance. Certainly it would be an improvement over the 2400/2600 GPUs they have now, at least for the baseline models.
fri2219 - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
Does your daddy's dick still taste like your shit?I look forward to your review of all the penises you've licked the shit off in the future.
Until then, shut the fuck up/
xeutonmojukai - Thursday, September 11, 2008 - link
Petty bickering makes one look petty, nothing more.Besides that, I have an interest in your expert assessment of your own experience licking feces off of male genitalia, since I'm sure it would be riveting compared to your new rival's most likely empty repertoire of anecdotes.
Back on-topic, I found this review to be great, and I also find that spelling is about as relevant to the quality of a person's writing of a review as an incoherent username is to the inherent coolness of the user on a reply thread.
Gristy - Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - link
I recent upgraded to the agp version of the 4670 my pc is pretty average, i have a 2.8 amd athlon 1.5 GB of ram and im currently running ARMA2 on high graphics with my resolution at 1024 x 768 and the game runs perfectly smooth with absolute fantastic graphics, i HIGHLY reccomend this budget card :Ddellprecision380 - Saturday, July 9, 2011 - link
4670 will work in x16 pci slot and 375watt psu?mother board intel 955xcs and pentium d 3.2ghz