Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 GDDR4

- 17th Feb 2009

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Final Words and Conclusion

The 4670 is certainly a decent card for its price point, offering playable performance in some titles up to 1920x1200, even with anti aliasing enabled. In addition to strong mid-range performance, the card is packed with features such as UVD and 7.1 audio … this particular model even has an on board HDMI connector for your home theatre needs.

The card is also equipped with a brand new cooler which improves upon the original Sapphire cooling solution we saw on their 4670 a few months ago and is vastly better than the reference cooler, offering a combination of impressive temperatures and low noise levels.

Sapphire have also equipped this version of the card with GDDR4 memory and Sapphire have also upped the default clock speed to 1100MHz. Realistically it is only going to offer a few FPS difference in games so some may find it hard to justify a purchase when the GDDR3 model is available for £15 less and carries dual DVI outputs.

The biggest worry for Sapphire will be the price at which many 9600GT cards are currently available on the market for. With plenty of models priced between £65 and £70, the 9600 GT appears to offer superior value for its performance. While the 4670 excels in Tomb Raider Underworld, the 9600GT outperforms it in 5 of the 6 games tested in this article. The Call of Duty performance was particularly disappointing on the Radeon part, getting completely blown away by the 9600 GT.

When we reviewed the first 4670 we were impressed by the price but with the current prices of the 9600 GT it is very hard to justify the price tag of this new 4670 based on performance figures. That said the 4670 is not without its advantages. In addition to outperforming the 9600GT in Grid and Tomb Raider, the card has a much shorter PCB than a 9600GT and does not require a 6 pin power connection for operation making it a more appealing solution for those with weaker power supply units.

Additionally, with ATI’s high definition decoding features, 7.1 surround sound, on board HDMI and a fantastic cooling solution the card is ideal for an HTPC setup. That is where this card becomes slightly confusing though because Sapphire have also just released the Ultimate 4670 which is a passively cooled card with on-board HDMI. With the GDDR4 version presented in this article, Sapphire ditched the dual DVI configuration found on the original 4670 and replaced it with a combination seemingly geared towards an HTPC setup with the inclusion of on board HDMI. The decision does not make perfect sense to us and we’d rather see dual DVI outputs for supporting up two monitors on this particular model.

While there is a market for a combination of those features and the added performance of this card, the majority of users considering this product will be looking for performance figures and in this battle the 4670 just doesn’t present as much value for performance as Nvidia’s offering at this price point. However, this is still a card worth considering if the connectivity and performance combination is ideal for you, especially in such an unpredictable market where prices are constantly changing.