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Impressions

We'll be looking at the reference design of the HD 4670 today. What does that mean? Well you won't be able to go to the stores and buy this exact card... but it also means that initially, that every HD 4670 offered by the board partners (Palit, VisionTek, Diamond etc) will only differ from our review card in appearance (a different sticker on the cooler), and the possibly the price (unlikely.) The HD 4670 should retail for $79 - $89 USD.

The HD 4670 does not have the huge cooler and long profile similar to its elder HD 4800 series brothers. Actually the HD 4670 is a bit smaller than I would have expected, coming in an inch shorter than the 8600 GTS. It has a single slot cooling solution, and will not take up much real estate on even a micro-ATX motherboard.

The cooler is small but seems to do the job just fine -- the HD 4670 does not heat up nearly to the heights that the HD 4800's reach. The fan on the cooler is fairly small, with 13 tiny, sharply angled vanes, but doesn't make much noise. However for a mid-range offering, the HD 4670 does have a fairly large copper heat plate under the plastic shroud, which also helps dissipate heat from the HD 4670's DDR3 memory.

As with all current generation ATI cards, you get the usual versatile set of capabilities: second gen' UVD engine for decoding HD video, DX 10.1 capability, Shader Model 4.1, PowerPlay tech for power savings mode, CrossFireX (so you'll be able to bridge this together with any HD 2000/3000/4000 video card for more performance), PCI Express 2.0 (greater bandwith than PCI Express 1.00, but this does not lead to significant performance gains), better AA performance compared to prior generations of cards (we'll test this in the benchmarks), and, of course, the ability to play (with promised reasonable framerates) all the enticing games on the horizon.

Also, for the HD 4670, ATI has been relating to us hardware reviewer types that the HD 4670 has superior HD upscaling potential in comparison with earlier mid-level models -- regertably we do not have a pair of massive monitors to throughly test this brave postulation. The HD 4670 also does not bear the standard dual DVI display ports: instead, there is one DVI port, and two DisplayPort ports (DisplayPorts are the new standard for display connectors, and should some day supplant DVI ports.) The HD 4670 is also capable of 8-channel audio through the Display Port. 

ATI family photo: HD 3450, HD 4670, HD 4850

Specifications

The HD 4670 has 320 stream processors like the HD 3870, but has a 128 bit memory interface, which will stifle performance somewhat in comparison with 256 bit memory interface of the HD 3850 and HD 3870. 128 bit memory however is the norm for the mid-range video cards of this and recent generations.

However, one break with earlier mid-range card traditions is that the HD 4670 has 512MB of GDDR3, and also comes in a 1GB configuration right off the bat. By the time the next generation of cards appears, it seems likely that 256MB of VRAM will solely be spotted on cards that linger in budget video card realm. The HD 4650, by the way, has GDDR2 memory.

The GPU (internal ATI name: RV730) operates at a core clock speed of 750, while the HD 4650 is set to 600 MHz.

 Judging from the chart above, the HD 4670 should out-maneuver the 9500 GT, but fall short of the 9600 GT. Perhaps it'll put it comparable numbers to the HD 3870 -- but with a 128 bit memory bus, it might be tough.

Overclocking

Using the CCC, we were able to overclock the HD 4670 to the maximum allowable clock settings: 800 MHz for the core, and 1100 (2200 effective) for the memory. This was stable enough to not crash during 1.5 hours of continual benchmark loops -- though the copper cooling plate was getting a little bit on the hot side (i.e, similar to the HD 4850's regularly operating temperatures!) 

Presumably the next version of the invaluable RivaTuner program will allow us to push beyond the CCC barriers, and see if this mid-range'r can support an even faster overclock.

On to the benchmarks.