Back when the Radeon HD 4670 was launched, Sapphire was the first company whose cards we have found in retail, and so far Sapphire managed to launch a couple of boards, one of which is fully passively cooled. Everyone had high expectations for the Radeon HD 4670, especially after rave articles the Radeon HD 4800 generation has received. It was priced at just $79, and the price hasn't changed since. This board is based on the same architecture as the famous Radeon HD 4870, but it's aimed at a lower segment, for those seeking for a sub-$100 card. The new architecture brought about a couple of improvements over the previous generation, most notably bad anti-aliasing performance. - FudZilla

Sapphire Ultimate HD 4670 512MB Video Card Review

The Radeon HD 4670 edition has a tough task of proving its worth in a quite densely populated sub-$100 segment. Proving its dominance over the GeForce 9500 GT isn't quite a tough task, but its true adversary is the GeForce 9600 GSO, as it costs only a couple of dollars more than the Radeon HD 4670 with GDDR3 memory. These cards in most cases run neck to neck, but the GeForce 9600 GSO's couple of dollars more bring a couple of frames more as well. In today's test, this will be the battle to behold. Two Radeon HD 4670 cards were announced, and they're different in terms of memory speeds and quantity.

Apart from the aforementioned Radeon HD 4670 boards, another RV730 based card hit the market, namely their Radeon HD 4650. This version however, uses DDR2 memory clocked at 1000MHz effectively and runs slower, at core speed of 600MHz. And note that all the Radeon HD 4600 series are stuck with the 128-bit memory interface. And unlike the RV730 cards, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO features the 192-bit memory interface, which coupled with 384MB of GDDR3 memory running at 1600MHz effectively enables it to score a higher bandwidth than that of the Radeon HD 4670 graphics cards, which is as such a bit crippled.

The Radeon HD 4670's cores run at 750MHz and it features just 320 stream processors. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate card we're looking at today comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, but it's the total silence that separates it from the pack. Sapphire achieved it by using a dual slot passive cooler that does a great job. Despite being dual slot, the most important thing is that the card is inaudible. The cooler has two heatpipes going from the front to the rear block, but the blocks are also connected via the aluminum bridge, featuring Sapphire's logo. In order to make the card passive and inaudible, heatpipes were a must.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate is a card with decent capabilities that, besides gaming, offers total silence during operation. It uses a passive cooler with heatpipe technology and no movable parts. It's one of the rare graphics cards that, apart from DVI and analog outputs, feature an HDMI outport. Coupled with integrated Avivo and unified video decoder technology, it provides great high definition multimedia capabilities. We must admit that a combination of silence and HDMI outputs are a dream come true for home theater PC enthusiasts. The graphics core features 320 stream processors and runs at 750MHz speed.

It comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory at 1746MHz effectively. And although the cooler is passive and not too large, thermal properties are great, but only if the in case airflow is appropriate. With $79 price it is just a few dollars more expensive then the actively cooled card, and if you want the passive one, this one makes a perfect sense. The GeForce 9600 GSO is just a tad pricier, we've seen that it's slightly better too. Passive cooling combined with HDMI outputs leave us no choice but to recommend it. For gaming at standard resolutions, the card runs just fine, but it's the golden silence that sets it apart from the rest.