After our recent article on the Radeon HD 4830, we move further down into a low-end graphics processing segment called the sub-$100 club. But gone are the days when low-end budget graphics cards could be ignored and no need for a sizeable bank balance to get gaming. The Radeon HD 4670 is about to seal the fate of its unfortunate counterparts. This also brings ATI in the fist position with their new series of video cards, on both low-end and mainstream segment where it really can make money with their products. And we are still waiting on NVIDIA to strike back with their mid-range card based upon their new generation, to introduce some new cards with further enhancements and die shrink. - t-break

ATI Radeon HD 4670 CrossFire Graphics Card Review

The card is fairly small and takes up minimal space in the case in addition to taking up not more than just one expansion slot. The card also has no additional power requirement unlike its superior cousins. The rear end has a DVI output and two DisplayPort outputs. Much like an HDMI output these DisplayPorts have audio support too. The DisplayPort while having some advantages over the DVI output, it does still lack a few features available to HDMI. On the top corner are the CrossFire connection options, so like other Radeon's, this card too can be used in a CrossFireX setup, as such deliver greater performance and game play.

Removing the full copper heatsink off the card was pretty easy. Now we can have a closer look at where all the interesting things about graphics happen before we can actually get to see it. And a closer shot reveals the RV730 GPU with 55nm die set to run at 750MHz with 320 shaders. The Hynix 1.0ns GDDR3 memory modules are rated to run at 2000MHz. The Radeon HD 4670 is one of those tricky characters, unlike the rest of the Radeon HD 4800 series cards that we have come across until now, this one has 2D to 3D auto switching clock speeds. When in 2D the clocks go down to 165MHz on core and 500MHz on memory.

We used RivaTuner for overclocking, and we first started off with the GPU with which we ended up at 820MHz. We then set the GPU to default and moved to check the memory clock and we were able to get it to hit 2300MHz. It was inevitably time to set both clocks to their max and run for some scores. The ATI Radeon HD 4670 card surpassed our expectations on low-end graphics cards performance. While the card is meant to be compared to NVIDIA's GeForce 9500 GT, we'd rather think it should be compared to the likes of a GeForce 9800 GT. The features were pretty standard and we weren't expecting much anyway.

However the manufacturer optional ATI specification DisplayPort makes for a nice addition to this card. The performance of a single Radeon HD 4670 board was something new for the low-end segment, but the thing that really got us excited was the CrossFireX setup, the scores and frame rates managed to pass a single GeForce 9800 GTX+ at times. The ATI Radeon HD 4670 pricing should be around $80-100 depending on the manufacturer. And with what we've just witnessed, you might as well get two of them for a CrossFire setup over a single GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card.