Sapphire Technology appears to have taken a liking to AMD's mainstream Radeon HD 4670 GPU - a card we're rather fond of ourselves.
At around £65, a stock-clocked card provides very decent 2D or 3D performance without leaving a gaping hole in the wallet. Improving on AMD's design, Sapphire introduced a suped-up Radeon HD 4670 derivative late last week featuring a custom SKU and quicker GDDR4 memory. Today, it's at it again with another SKU, the Radeon HD 4670 ULTIMATE:
Despite the ULTIMATE branding, the card is underclocked and aimed directly at the HTPC crowd. Its key feature is the silent dual-heatpipe passive cooling solution, which, says Sapphire, must only be used in a system with good ventilation. We're always happy to see silent cards, but the heatsink design on this one may infringe certain low-profile HTPC chassis - be sure you've enough headroom before you take the plunge.
The card's GPU is clocked at the standard 750MHz, but to help keep cool its 512MB of GDDR3 memory is clocked at an effective 1,746MHz - down from the reference 2,000MHz. As with the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 GDDR4, the ULTIMATE edition sports VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs, highlighting the card's HTPC credentials and effectively covering all the latest HDTV sets.
We're yet to receive word on pricing, but we'd hope to see this one below the £70 mark.
Official press release: SILENT SAPPHIRE HD 4670 IS THE ULTIMATE!
