Regularly, manufacturers of video cards delight fans of computer games. Releasing in 2008, the Radeon HD 4670, the company was able to take its position among budget models. You can compare it with the GeForce 9500GT from the main competitor. At that time, the cost was about $ 80, and every economical gamer wanted to get it.
Description
Radeon HD 4670 got all the features of similar models and a lot of technological innovations. The developers made it small. There is only one expansion port, and no additional power is required. The video card does not consume much energy, like similar models. The Radeon HD 4670 can be overclocked quite well. Thanks to the support of shaders 4.1, in 2009 it was a good solution for the gaming system. The video adapter will cope with modern games, but with difficulties. Therefore, you should pay attention to more modern devices.
Packaging
Video card for sale in a small box. On the front side there is an image of a girl. Here are the main features of the device, as well as the type of memory and its amount are presented in the right corner.
The back side shows more detailed data on the video card. There is also a description of the configuration and other interesting information. Otherwise, the box will not surprise the user. It is neither better nor worse than those provided by other firms.
Equipment
Let's move on to bundling the Radeon HD 4670. The developer has not prepared any pleasant surprises for the buyer. The reason is simple - budget. The kit includes:
- adapters (from S-Video to component; from DVI to D-Sub; from DVI to HDMI);
- a disk with drivers for the video card and useful utilities;
- A small guide to the ATI Radeon HD 4670.
Appearance
Expect something from a budget graphics card in terms of design. The device is similar to competitors in this price segment. There are no major changes in the structure and cooling system. There is no port for connecting an additional power source. This suggests that the maximum power consumption is 75 V. There are two slots into which ATI CrossFireX bridges can be inserted.
The reverse side of the Radeon HD 4670, the driver for which can be found on the manufacturer’s website, received stickers that indicate its capabilities and origin. There are also four memory chips.
GPU
The Radeon HD 4670 graphics card received an RV 730 XT graphics processor. Has 320 streaming pipelines. For information, in older versions they are 2.5 times more. Designed by 55 nm process technology. I got 8 rasterization blocks and 32 texture ones. GPU takes up a little space - only 145 mm². The graphics processor operates at a frequency of 750 MHz.
Video memory
ATI Radeon HD 4670, the driver on which it is easy to install, received 1 GB of video memory. Many users expressed the opinion that the added 512 MB did not bring a significant increase in performance. The type of memory is GDDR3. The sampling time is 1.1 ns, which is equal to a clock frequency of 1800 GHz. At the same time, there is a small reserve of memory for overclocking. It works through a 128-bit bus with a throughput of 27.9 Gb / s.
Cooling system
The video card cooling system is quite similar to other models of this company. It has a radiator made of aluminum and a fan. The system is quiet. At maximum and continuous loads, the temperature is kept within 74 degrees Celsius. Despite the absence of almost half of the transistors, as in older models, the temperatures are almost identical. All this speaks of developers saving on the cooling system. An obvious plus is the quiet work.
Immediately after the purchase, check the presence of thermal grease. In some kits, there are video cards with poor-quality thermal grease. It should be replaced in order to avoid overheating.
In games
Now let's move on to the most interesting part - consider how the video card behaves in games. We are sure that many potential buyers of this model will be interested not only in how to download the Radeon HD 4670 driver (Windows 7 and newer). Moreover, now it is not difficult to do. It makes no sense to test the video card in modern and demanding games - it won’t. Older releases the model launches quite successfully. Well, we will analyze in more detail:
- In Serious Sam 2 with maximum settings, the video card showed itself at an average level. The game worked at 70 fps, which is a good indicator. However, the GeForce 9600GT, which has faster memory and its 512 MB capacity, beat the device from Radeon almost 2 times.
- At Prey, things are better. Radeon HD 4670 showed an average of 75 frames per second. She failed to get ahead of the same 9600GT, but she was only 13 fps behind.
- At maximum settings in Call of Juarez, the Radeon HD 4670 showed 40 fps. Once again, the video card was left behind a similar model from Nvidia. Although the game comes with a sufficient number of frames, I would like more, given 1 GB of video memory.
- The popular first part of Crysis at maximum settings (some additional options are disabled) gave only 26 frames per second. For a shooter, this is not enough. If you enable additional functions and set a higher resolution, the FPS seriously sags. At GeForce 9600GT, things are not much, but better - FPS fluctuates at 30 frames.
- The famous Company of Heros at maximum settings showed 31 frames (resolution - 1280x1024). Play comfortably, no sagging and lags. But again, the video card yielded to many peers, showing a result less than 7 fps.
- The exciting Devil May Cry 4 graphics card launched without much effort. At maximum graphics settings, the game runs at 54 fps. Here, the device from Radeon managed to become on a par with competitors. The GeForce 9600GT shows the same number of frames, and in some scenes less.
- World in Conflict started without difficulty, but showed only 18 fps. You can play, but not very comfortable. And again, similar models managed to slightly get ahead of the Radeon HD 4670.
- Far Cry 2 at maximum settings showed more than 30 frames per second. No serious slack was noticed. Models from Nvidia showed a similar result, and in some locations even worse. However, such FPS is possible only with a resolution of 1280x1024. With an increase, a serious drop in the number of frames per second occurs and it becomes uncomfortable to play.
The video card allows the user to play not very demanding games, but can’t cope with the latest products. In many releases, you have to seriously reduce the graphics settings to get an acceptable fps. As it becomes clear, an additional 512 MB of memory did not give the expected increase. Therefore, users who are looking for a video card for games, Radeon HD 4670 is hardly suitable.
Overclocking
In order to increase the performance of the video card, you can overclock it. In this case, you should be very careful - improper actions can disable it. For overclocking, you can use the RivaTuner program.
In a fairly simple interface of the utility, it is necessary to change the performance of the graphics core and video memory. Do not set too high values. The following are optimal: in the GPU line - from 750 to 793 MHz, and in the line "Memory frequency" - from 1746 to 2097 MHz.
After these manipulations, the video card becomes more efficient and productive. The increase in games can be more than 14%. Thanks to overclocking, you can go through your favorite games.
Reviews
Users note the following advantages of the model:
- support for DirectX 10.1 (Shader Model 4.1), OpenGL 2.0;
- the ability to decode HD video.
Disadvantages:
- cheap cooling system;
- additional 512 MB of slow memory, which cannot provide superiority over video cards with 512 MB.
Conclusion
It is time to take stock. By the way, it is best to download the driver (Windows 7/8/10) to the ATI Radeon HD 4670 on the manufacturer’s website in order to protect the personal computer from malware.
Despite the additional 512 MB of video memory, the model soon lost in performance. Competitors with less memory but more speed are significantly superior to the Radeon HD 4670.
If all this is discarded, then the video card turned out to be very interesting. The main advantage was the price, which does not exceed $ 100. Moreover, the video card can be overclocked and thus put on a par with more famous models. The user who decides to overclock his Radeon HD 4670 should remember about good cooling. With insufficient ventilation, the device may overheat.
Radeon HD 4670 is perfect for undemanding buyers who use a computer for editing documents, surfing and other simple tasks.