AMD Radeon HD 4670: Ruling from Top to Bottom
by Derek Wilson on September 10, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
When the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 hit the scene, they were simply the best cards at or near their price points. Their release caused major price drops on NVIDIA hardware and really shook up the market. The question is: is the Radeon HD 4670 something like a 4850 for the sub $100 market? Unfortunately, that's a more difficult question to answer than it was with the higher end parts. Yes the 4670 outperforms the 9500 GT, and where it doesn't out perform the 9600 GSO it is competitive. So what's the problem?
The 3850 trails behind sometimes, but the 3870 generally maintains a performance lead. You can now find 3870 starting at around $100 (GeForce 9600 GT also falls into this category), and we'd rather spend the extra bit of cash and get added performance. (Ed: Updated to reflect current prices.) The value is still lower at a lower price than other hardware that's more expensive. We pointed out this problem in our recent 9500 GT review as well: spending less money gets you disproportionately less performance. It's similar to how we see diminishing returns for increased spending at the very high end.
The 4670 doesn't change the game enough to say that spending more money isn't worth it, but the 4670 does lead at its price point and is good enough for anyone with a 1280x1024 monitor to have a good experience. We even see some advantages that would allow us to enable 4xAA at these low resolutions and enjoy playable performance. This card isn't going to change the world, but it fits a niche. Throw in the lower power requirements and smaller form factor and you have a great card for moderate gaming.
Unlike the 9500 GT, this card isn't an epic fail at its price point. We would still like more (we always do), but what we've got isn't bad. This is hardware based on a new architecture (meaning it has all the latest features and bug fixes like working AA hardware), unlike NVIDIA's competitive offerings. We can play most of the games we tested at 1280x1024 (a very cheap very widely used panel size) with high quality settings and some of them do well with 4xAA enabled as well.
So this (almost) rounds out a top to bottom RV7xx lineup from AMD - we're still waiting on one more part. The hardware does outperform the competition at the same price point (though that isn't saying much), and we even get playable performance at 1280x1024 (a key target resolution for budget systems). If you want gaming performance first, however, you will still need a more powerful GPU - we'd recommend spending a little bit more like the HD 3870, 9600 GT, or 8800 GT, and if you can swing it the HD 4850 and 9800 GTX+ offer excellent performance at the $180 price point. On the other hand, the 4670 works great as a Jack of all trades.
In light of all that, what's the verdict? If you just can't spend that extra ~$20, this is absolutely the card to buy right now. This might be the 4850 or 4870 of the sub $100 market, but the problem is that the sub $100 market still doesn't provide the kind of gaming performance we would like to see compared to the rest of the market. It's easy to argue that people pay a premium for the best performance out there, but it just doesn't make sense on the lower end. For the people who need a card that fits this niche and price point, the 4670 is the card to pick up unless there's a great sale or rebate offered on a higher performing part. With lower prices, small fluctuations can really stir things up. But the 4670 gets our nod when it comes to current street prices and AMD's suggested pricing.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
90 Comments
View All Comments
Spivonious - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
The real advantage to this card over the similarly-priced 3870 is that it doesn't require any extra power connectors. I imagine it also runs much cooler, therefore not needing a loud cooling solution.Are there any fanless versions of this card in the works? It seems like it would be fantastic for the casual gamer who doesn't want a screaming beast of a machine.
mczak - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
is obviously wrong in the chart, should be 192mm^2 or some such (118mm^2 could be the size of rv635 maybe).toyota - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
its 146 mm. http://www.firingsquad.com/media/article_image.asp...">http://www.firingsquad.com/media/article_image.asp...toyota - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
oops I think you were talking about the 3870 in that chart...nafhan - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
In case anyone else is curious, here's a rundown of current lowest prices (from Newegg, shipping not included):3650 $40
2600XT GDDR4 $44
9500GT $54
9600 GSO $75
3850 $75
9600 GT $80
3870 $90
8800 GT $105
4850 $150
So, as long as 4670's slot in below $75 they should sell fairly well. If MSRP is $79, that shouldn't be a problem.
Interestingly, it looks like they are starting to put 768MB of RAM on some 9600 GSO's. Not to interesting though, since that jacks it up to the price of an 8800GT...
reader1 - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
I'm looking for a low power Intel C2D motherboard. What board did you use for the power consumption tests? It says an Intel G45 in the article but neither of your test bed boards are G45 boards.computerfarmer - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
Does it CrossFire?Good Card for the money.
derek85 - Saturday, September 13, 2008 - link
Yes it doesnpp - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
I don't care if the review is biased or not, just don't have so much time to analyze every single word or sentence and extraxt the bias towards nVidia from it... I found it useful, and the 4670 seems a very, very good card for its money - and considering the already low power consumption of the 3850, the 4670 is an instant HTPC favourite, consuming even less. By the way, I never thought of sub-100$ cards as of something more than just a IGP extension, gaming performance is by no means the decisive factor here. If it can run passively, accelerate H.264 and handle some basic graphic tasks, than it's fine for me. If you can play some games with it - you got a nice bonus.Gastrian - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - link
A few of my famlymembers and myself were looking to upgrading our PCs over the next six months so I've been keeping an eye on new hardware, especially graphic cards.We are only looking at budget systems and seeing the benchmarks for the 4670, especially Crysis, at that pricepoint and I was about to recommend it to my family based on the review. I re-read the article and noticed your test setup, the Q9770 alone costs almost £1000!
I know the point of the article maybe to compare the various GPUs as fairly as possible but these aren't real world figures because I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone in the real world who will use a budget GPU with an ultra high-end CPU.
Myself, like most sane people, would couple this GPU with an entry level Celeron, Core2 or AMD X2 CPU and these charts don't say how much real world performance I'm going to get on this card.
While I'm not expecting to get Crysis playable on the low end I am interested in the likes of Diablo3, Starcraft2 and Dawn of War2 and am severely disappointed at the lack of RTS games in your benchmarks, especially on the mid to budget reviews as these are generally the games you'll get played on lower systems.