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Review: Sapphire (AMD) Radeon HD 4670: bullying the mainstream market

by Tarinder Sandhu on 10 September 2008, 09:09

Tags: Radeon HD 4670 512MB, ATI Radeon HD 4670, AMD (NYSE:AMD), Sapphire, ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD), PC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qapbb

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Table of Doom

It would be prudent to take a look at our in-depth Radeon HD 4800-series review because many of the advancements made by Radeon HD 4600, over and above HD 3600, are derived from the same design decisions that makes the higher-end SKU so much better than the 38x0 it replaced.

HD 4600, we note, arrives in at least three configurations.

Let's trot out the ubiquitous Table of Doom and highlight the new SKUs' specifications.

Graphics cardsATI Radeon HD 4670 GDDR3/DDR3ATI Radeon HD 4650 DDR2 ATI Radeon HD 3650 GDDR3 ATI Radeon HD 3850 GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO GDDR3
PCIe PCIe 2.0
GPU clock 750MHz 600MHz 725MHz 666MHz 550MHz 650MHz 550MHz
Shader clock 750MHz 600MHz 725MHz 666MHz 1,400MHz 1,625MHz 1,375MHz
Memory clock (effective) 2,000MHz/1,800MHz 1,000MHz 1,600MHz 1,656MHz 1,600MHz (GDDR3) 1,800MHz 1,600MHz
Memory interface, size, and implementation 128-bit, 512MB/1024MB GDDR3/DDR3 128-bit, 256/512MB, DDR2 128-bit, 256MB/512MB, GDDR3 256-bit, 512MB, GDDR3 128-bit, 256MB/512MB, GDDR3 256-bit, 256MB/512MB, GDDR3 192-bit, 384/768MB, GDDR3
Memory bandwidth 32GB/28.8GB/sec 16GB/sec 25.6GB/sec 53GB/sec 25.6GB/sec 57.6GB/sec 38.4GB/sec (card)
Manufacturing process TSMC, 55nm TSMC, 65/55nm TSMC, 65/55nm TSMC, 65/55nm
Transistor count 514M 514M 378M 666M ? 505M 754M
Die size 146mm² 146mm² 118mm² 192mm² ?mm² ?mm² ?mm²
DirectX Shader Model DX10.1, SM4.1 DX10, SM4.0
Vertex, fragment, geometry shading (shared) 320 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) 320 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) 120 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) 320 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) 32 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) 64 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) 96 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified)
Peak GFLOP/s 480 384 174 426.2 134.4 312 396
Data sampling and filtering 32ppc address and 32ppc bilinear INT8 filtering (16ppc FP16), max 16xAF 32ppc address and 32ppc bilinear INT8 filtering (16ppc FP16), max 16xAF 8ppc address and 8ppc bilinear INT8/FP16 filtering, max 16xAF 16ppc address and 16ppc bilinear INT8/FP16 filtering, max 16xAF 16ppc address and 16ppc bilinear INT8/8ppc FP16 filtering, max 16xAF 32ppc address and 32ppc bilinear INT8/16ppc FP16 filtering, max 16xAF 48ppc address and 48ppc bilinear INT8/24ppc FP16 filtering, max 16xAF
Peak GTexel/s (bilinear) 24 19.2 5.8 10.656 8.8 20.8 26.4
Peak GPixel/s 6 4.8 2.9 10.656 4.4 10.4 6.6
ROPs 8 8 4 16 8 16 12
Peak TDP (claimed) 59W 48W 47W 90W 50W 95W 100W
Power connectors (default clock) None None None 6-pin None 6-pin 6-pin
Multi-GPU CrossFireX - four-board CrossFireX four-board CrossFireX four-board CrossFireX - four-board SLI - two-board SLI - two-board SLI - two-board
Outputs (native) 2 x dual-link DVI w/HDCP, DisplayPort, HDMI 7.1  2 x dual-link DVI w/HDCP, DisplayPort, HDMI 7.1  2 x dual-link DVI w/HDCP, DisplayPort, HDMI 5.1 2 x dual-link DVI w/HDCP, DisplayPort, HDMI 5.1 2 x dual-link DVI w/HDCP, mini-DIN, DisplayPort, HDMI 2 x dual-link DVI w/HDCP  mini-DIN, DisplayPort, HDMI 2 x dual-link DVI w/HDCP, min-DIN, HDMI
Hardware-assisted video-decoding engine AMD UVD 2 - full H.264 and VC-1 decode AMD UVD 1 - full H.264 and VC-1 decode NVIDIA PureVideo3 HD - full H.264 and VC-1 decode NVIDIA PureVideo2 HD - full H.264 and partial VC-1 decode (no entropy)
Reference cooler single-slot single-slot single-slot single-slot single-slot single-slot single-slot
Retail price (default-clocked model) £50-£55* £40-£45* £35 £60 £45 £70 £70


* estimated pricing.