Personally, I think one of the best features of the HD 4670 is it's low power consumption and that it doesn't require any extra PCIE 6 pin power connectors. As you say, perfect for "granny's HP", or Dells, which come with woefully inadequate power supply's as standard. Not having to buy a better power supply makes upgrading a much less painful, and cheaper, proposition now, and you're not sacrificing much in terms of performance.

A few too many times in the past, my "potential PC gamer" friends have been turned off of getting a video card right after I start talking about power supplies....

Good (and amusing!) article all around. One quibble is no 1280x1024 testing on Crysis Warhead?

I've just updated the theoretical GPU capacity table in this review to correct the fill rate numbers for the GeForce GTX 260. The revised numbers are slightly lower. The performance results remain unaffected.

I think 4670 is great for granny computers with 300 watt power supply but that GSO is just cheaper AR and overclocking beast. At least EVGA are great about rebates. Got mine rebate within 5th week.

I got the EVGA 8800gs when they were $110 after rebate and these cards are a steal at $50. Have it clocked 741/1836/1058 from 550/1375/800 with stock cooling. 8800gt performance for fraction of the cost.

A glimpse of what a GSO is capable of at semi high clocks of 680/1700/950 vs 4670

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/09/11/amd-ati-radeon-hd-4670-...

The evga card is already sold out at Newegg. Hopefully they get more in soon since that is a good deal.

Not everyone plays games or at least the kind of games that would need serious graphical processing power. I understand the larger part of the audience of this website might favor the latest hardware and so the article keeps this in mind, but price and power consumption (and associated heat) might be more important to a lot of people. While it's true that just a few bucks more might give you a faster card that uses more power and produces more heat, there really isn't too much of a point to nudge people to buy more than their requirements are.

There's some interesting information in this comparison, though. You get a lot for very little these days...

Is the need for auxiliary power in video cards because the power provided by the PSU is 'cleaner'? Or because the PCI-E x16 slot doesn't provide enough power on its own? Or some combination of both?

I ask because if the 4670 winds up doing really well, with OEMs and consumers, it could maybe lead to a shift toward greater power efficiency and the, probably very slow, phasing out of auxiliary power connectors on at least mainstream cards and below. But, depending on the need for aux power, that would either require alot of collaboration with motherboard makers or it may not be possible at all (or at least it'd be restricted to sub-$100 cards).

OK, seriously, you could build a gaming machine around an X2 2.6GHz, an AMD 770FX motherboard (or an nForce if you prefer) and a 4670 for under $400. Games-capable PC's might finally get in line with console prices.

If I wanted a games-capable PC, the price is certainly right.

Why no S3 Chrome included? It seems like it'd be a perfect fit for a sub-$100 graphics card review. And I'd have loved to see how it stacked up against the more mainstream offerings.

I think the HD 4670 is a very nice card, but I am pretty happy with my new $50 AR 9600 GSO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130356. Evidently it can overclock a bit too http://www.legitreviews.com/article/797/1/.

I just sold my second quad core system paired with an HD4850 and downgraded to a mid range core 2 with the HD 4670. It seems that I can pocket about $400 and maintain 95% of my other systems functionality with the only exception of CRYSIS gaming.

Put simply any framerate speeds over 40 fps are probably not noticeable to the average person. Crysis and Warhead are the only games that my new system takes a noticeable hit on. Otherwise I'm just fine with the $500 in savings...

OLD SYSTEM
Dell Inspiron 530 with Q9300 3 gigs ram, HD 4850 250G H/D
New system Dell Inspiron 530 with Core 2 E7200 @2.53 2 gigs and HD4670 250G H/D

Both gaming on a 22" DeLL LCD.

Quad core is mostly a waste of money for gaming in the here and now and the extra frames per second resulting from the better card are not noticeable anyway in most games. (1680 x 1050 with 2x 8x) No need to upgrade the power supply and fool with surgery time and the extra money needed for it. Sure I may have to take it down a slight notch in eye candy here and there but so what!

128bit vs 256bit
the HD38x0 is 256bit and the HD46x0 is 128bit
but the HD38x0 does not get stronger compared to the HD46x0 when AA is turned up.
why?

Brace for impact. Slashdot just linked.

It'd be neat to see a new cooler review. I gather there are some VGA coolers on the market that'll fit the 4850.

Nice review Scott. Nice array of cards tested. Nice explanation of where the card stands with respect to the competition.

I can't say that I'd buy the card rather than looking up market. It's one of those things where if my budget was $50 I'd try to stretch and get the card, if my budget was $80 I'd try to get the 9600GT, if my budget was $100 I'd save up for the 4850.

Even though it has been said billions of times before, it is always worth saying again - Nvidia has the most cluster mucked product line up possible. It does not seem possible to screw it up any worse. It is so confusing that, were it not for articles like these, I'd veer away from Nvidia's cards simply because I would not know what was under the hood based on the product name.

great article, been looking forward to it for ages. The value issue here in Oz is a hard one - 9600GT cards have been around for a while so they're bumping around at $120, whereas the few 4670s that come up are min $130. So, I like the massively reduced (30W at idle is huge) power consumption of the 4670, but the 9600GT spanks it in games and probably will keep doing so for longer. Hmm.

On a similar point - for your power consumption graphs, can you test at 1) idle 2) CPU fully loaded (CPUburn or similar) and 3) CPUburn+ATItool, that way it'll be easier to get an idle and load figure for the graphics card. At the moment, the load power value is going to be a mix of CPU and GPU load, though that's also an informative, real world value.

Damage..i think u guys should include more overclocking results, with gpu-z screen shots.Most of the cards tested relly so good overclocks, especially with Rivatuner 2.10 coming out.Cheers.
After all this is an enthusiast site..much appreciate it

Just replaced my 2600xt with a 4670. 3dmark05 score went from just over 10k to over 15k. The card is smaller, and uses less juice. Very pleased.

Damage, you identified those flowers as roses when they are most likely intended to be cherry blosssoms.

Back to Botany 101 for you! ;)

Thanks for including 1680x1050! Good article.

Hmm. Nice review, thanks man. Is it me or does it seem that the 8.8 catalyst drivers have the 4850 quite a bit better than the intial drivers with which this card was originally reviewed at? I don't remember the 4850 whipping the 9600GT or the 9800GTX (let alone the GTX+) like that. At the risk of sounding like a fanboi and starting all kinds of unpleasantries, someone send this review to our good friend, Asif1924, and tell him to pay attention to the 4850 and its overall "inferiority to Nvidia counterparts" :)

I found a serious error in your review. The 9600 GSO has been out for quite some time. http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=48106&highlight=9600+GSO

Damn near five months. The card was not put out to compete with the Radeon HD 4670.

Are they going to release a PCI version of this I can plug into my future Atom 330 secondary system? Only reason I've not gotten one of the $100 Atom 330 boards yet is I'd like a decent PCI video card to plug into it (current options are limited... GeForce 6200 or Radeon HD 2400pro based)

The big loser here is the 9500GT...there are cheaper prev/gen cards that defeat it at every turn and you don't give up either power consumption or noise. And there are tons of passive designs in lots of prev/gen...2600XT, 2600Pro, 3650, 8600GT all beat the 9500GT, and if you go back to DX9, the field widens further.

And any card that requires a PEG connector where a comparably-performing card does not is the other big loser. As someone up-thread said, anyone with an OEM Dell or HP is gonna love the 4670.

As an aside, I'm using an OLD HP chassis with a 200W PSU for a E6300/ATI3450 (HTPC) and it runs 24/7 recording shows and playback, and the PSU is already 6 years old. Don't be too quick to knock OEM PSU's.

Edit: went back and re-read the testing notes.

2 comments: I can buy the need to avoid super long testing times, but I still think a reasonable total system price for comparison is still important for reviews like this one. If you took the time to use an E4300 for the video tests, why not use it for the whole review?

Second, it would be very useful to have prices as tested on the parts chart under the Test Notes. The variation point (graphics card, hard drive, CPU, whatever) could just have it's price next to it and the reader has to add that part to the system cost for the other parts.

You can get a 9600GT for $95
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133239

A far better card than the 4670. Seems to be the king of the sub $100 cards based on the review.

Now which one of these will play Fallout 3?

I guess, technically, I should say it's a "512 MiB" card, but I'd rather claw my eye out with a fork.

No need to go that far if you don't want to (although that would be accurate), it's enough if you just achieve half of it and add a space between amounts and units as it should be.

Thanks for the review! I've been waiting on this one. It's good to see some great competition coming out of AMD/ATI on the graphics front.

Thanks for showing us penny-pinching cheapskates some luv Damage.

Awesome article. I'm more than likely going to be switching to a cheaper, single slot GPU come winter and this article presents alot of nice options. I'm just getting tired of fatass dual slot cards that have more power than I need and block up my expansion ports.