Legit Reviews

Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR4 Video Card Review

The Radeon HD 4670 is the mid-range offering from ATI, with lower performance than the Radeon HD 4770 & 4800 series but more performance than the Radeon HD 4300 and 4500 series. With so many new cards out there, the Radeon HD 4670 fits in nicely to the sub $75 market. Let's see how well it performs against its main competitor from the NVIDIA camp, the GeForce 9600GSO 384MB.

The video card market is an ever-expanding one that sees new cards from ATI and NVIDIA alike month after month. Granted, some are just core refreshes or 're-branding,' but there is always something new. Usually cards that are released in between series updates offer a good price/performance ratio, and lower the price of main cards as well; two of those cards will be compared today. Up on the review block are the ASUS GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB and the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB.

Article Title: Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR4 Video Card Review
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/1011/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $69.99 plus shipping

i beg you!

why don't you make up the statistics in the same scale?

It's quite a bam... for example in the test on Need For Speed, the 9600 card seems to triple the performances of the 4670, but the reality is a few fps from each other... and the same in Colin McRae and Crysis.

please!

aztreonam wrote:i beg you!

why don't you make up the statistics in the same scale?

It's quite a bam... for example in the test on Need For Speed, the 9600 card seems to triple the performances of the 4670, but the reality is a few fps from each other... and the same in Colin McRae and Crysis.

please!

I've e-mailed Austin and asked him to make the changes since he has the data in Excel already... They should be the same scale and sorry about that.

It's amazing nowadays, that a cheap video card can play games with ultra settings. You never heard of this a couple years ago.

Apoptosis wrote:

aztreonam wrote:i beg you!

why don't you make up the statistics in the same scale?

It's quite a bam... for example in the test on Need For Speed, the 9600 card seems to triple the performances of the 4670, but the reality is a few fps from each other... and the same in Colin McRae and Crysis.

please!

I've e-mailed Austin and asked him to make the changes since he has the data in Excel already... They should be the same scale and sorry about that.

fixed it, sorry guys, my first review with performance charts

Yeah but the ASUS 9600GSO 384MB is around 35-40 bucks after rebate on newegg. 4670 is still around 55-65.

The 4670 will run well on lower stock power supplies (300-350w). 9600GSO requires more power and generates more heat, but then again apparently Dell power supplies aren't labeled correctly in terms of load.

"Performance-wise, I'm very impressed with the Radeon HD 4670 because it not only has higher frame-rates in GRiD and L4D, but it never had any issues with choppy game-play in any game. The 9600GSO may have gotten high frame rates in most games, but I can't deny the fact that the HD4670 played better in every game, whether it was running at 15fps or 70, the game play was perfect: no slide-shows, no random errors or crashes. "

That's what I'm talking about. It's the worst thing in the world when the game starts to chop. I so can't wait to build my new rig once I'm done with the degree this summer.

I also love the fact that it doesn't require a 6-pin power supply connection.

Apoptosis wrote:I've e-mailed Austin and asked him to make the changes since he has the data in Excel already... They should be the same scale and sorry about that.

skier wrote:fixed it, sorry guys, my first review with performance charts

ehi, don't worry!

you 're great, that was only a little charm of mine..

i've found the same thing in too many sites, but today i was particularly angry

Nice review and great results for a budget card. Would be fun to see four of them in CFX, maybe 30k in 06 with a 5GHz i7

I still believe ATI has a few too many graphic cards. The HD4830 and HD4770 are too close together, there should just be the HD4770 at $100. Then the HD4650 and HD4670 should be one SKU with GDDR4 or 5, around $75. Then the HD4350 and HD4550 should be one product between $40 and $50 with 128mb or 256mb of GDDR3. I can't recall how many times I've had to explain the fine differences between two nearly identically priced cards

Wow. After all these months, NVIDIA is still DOMINATING ATI in CoD4. I thought it was weird to see another 4670 review, then I saw why. Great work skier ^^. And wasn't your name skierkid before?

On a side note, I bought a Gigabyte 4670 for my friend. I still have it here since I didn't see him yet. He's gonna give me back $80CAD - $10 rebate that I will shortly submit.

P.S. Grats on your first review

Neither of the pricing links refers to the specific products reviewed in the article. BTW, the gso card is $55 with a $20 rebate at newegg and the gddr4 4670 seems to be evaporating, ewiz had sold them for $69 but ran out last week. As an aside, it might have worth testing the relative overclock-ability of each. The 128 bit 4670 I suspect would benefit greatly from a mem OC. Conversely, 9600 gso are known as having high OC potential (I was able to OC my gso gpu, shader and memory by 22%). I too have noticed the variance in frame rates on the nvidia though from my observation it correlates directly with the amount of smoke and particles.

geokilla wrote:Wow. After all these months, NVIDIA is still DOMINATING ATI in CoD4. I thought it was weird to see another 4670 review, then I saw why. Great work skier ^^. And wasn't your name skierkid before?

P.S. Grats on your first review

skier=skierkid450 more standardized(i use skier for most usernames now)
and its not the first, though it is by far the biggest review i've done here, also handled the actual uploading as well for the first time
you may remember the NZXT Avatar, Saitek Cyborg 5.1, and the Razer Destructor Pro Mouse Pad

as for the overclocking, the 9600GSO's i have both go from 600/900/1700 to just 634/939/1796 or at least that's the highest i can get them to run F@H AND Games though that is with two in the system, with just one the temps might be a little better, but with both, they load @91C or so, idle around 55. with one card the temps still aren't very pretty, unlike the 4670(which cannot be overclocked atm because somehow it died when i snapped a pic of the core)

and btw, keep in mind the L4D scores if thats the kind of games you play, because the GSO lagged HARD in a lot of places(like gameplay would either be 9-18fps, or it would abruptly Stop for up to 20 seconds) whereas the 4670 loved the game and never dipped below 50fps

GDDR4 eh? I didn't even know there was such a thing haha

Evasion wrote:GDDR4 eh? I didn't even know there was such a thing haha

GDDR5 on the higher end ATI cards....

(4770,4870,4890)

i forgot to mention at all the Fan since its so quiet figured you guys might want to know: Arctic Cooling Accelero L2 Pro 12V, .15A 92mm

Dont see any mention on how it works on current Linux distros. Just a side note, most ATI cards that are newer have all kinds of issues with 3d and new linux kernels....

ap90033 wrote:Dont see any mention on how it works on current Linux distros. Just a side note, most ATI cards that are newer have all kinds of issues with 3d and new linux kernels....

i cant say i've seen a single review in my life that does...

Did anybody else notice that the gso in the review is defective, the heat sink is improperly installed, idle temp at 55c, games playing choppy, loud fan.... I have two of the newegg specials and the idle temp is 44c, 46c with a 30% overclock, always quiet... as a matter of fact even with on high I can not hear it And the sudden stops in the games for 20 second only occur when I have overclocked to much.

http://forums.legitreviews.com/about21667.html

i've had each of my GSO's above 110C before for various reasons(fan was hung up on a spare wire for HDaudio, TVtuner blocked air flow entirely(got to 112 for almost two days straight folding), fan got unplugged once) G92 cards can handle the heat no prob

Also my highest temp 66c

spitter wrote:Did anybody else notice that the gso in the review is defective, the heat sink is improperly installed, idle temp at 55c, games playing choppy, loud fan.... I have two of the newegg specials and the idle temp is 44c, 46c with a 30% overclock, always quiet... as a matter of fact even with on high I can not hear it And the sudden stops in the games for 20 second only occur when I have overclocked to much.

I've never had that specific heat sink before so how is it installed wrong?