AMD has launched the HD 4670 graphics circuit, a.k.a. RV730, which means that it now also covers the entry segment of the graphics card market with new RV7xx architecture. It was not long ago that the flagship Radeon HD 4870X2 was unleashed, while Radeon HD 4850 has dominated the mid-range segment since the launch this summer. For obvious reasons, Radeon HD 4670 had a lot to live up to and the question is what you can expect from AMD’s first card of the 7 series costing less than $100.
It is quite clear that AMD has stripped RV730 XT from a whole bunch of the hardware found with Radeon HD 4850/4870. The number of stream processors (shader units) has been reduced from 800 to 320 and the number of texture and render units. The clock frequency of the core is quite high though, 750MHz, the same as with Radeon HD 4870. The memory is either 2000MHz GDDR3 or regular DDR3 at 1800MHz in 512MB or 1GB configurations.
Little brother Radeon HD 4650 has to settle for a GPU frequency of 600MHz and 1000MHz DDR2 memory, and of course a lower price.
Radeon HD 4670 does live up to the hype that the HD 4800 series built up and even if the 3D performance may not be breathtaking it’s still fast for the segment. Ironically, the price cuts of the last generation makes Radeon HD 3870 the biggest competition, but it will soon be phased out. Interestingly, two Radeon HD 4670 cards in CrossFire looks to be a worthy opponent to Radeon HD 4850, both in price and performance.
Something that should appeal to HTPC enthusiast is that Radeon HD 4670 sports the updated UVD2 engine and that the 55nm core pulls 59W at most, which should result in both low power consumption and possibly passive cooling. Prices are around $95 for most of the Radeon HD 4670-based cards. Below are some of the reviews posted around the web;
:: Anandtech :: HotHardware :: Hexus :: Hexus 4670 CF ::
