Today we will have a look at the new mainstream and entry level from ATI, viz the HD 4670 and HD 4550.
To start about things, ATI(acquired by AMD) has been on a roll with their HD 4800 series. The series thwarted Nvidia of their throne at the performance-mainstream as well as the Enthusiast range.But the 9600GT and 9500GT from Nvidia are still ruling the roost at the mainstream and entry level scene in India as well as worldwide. To fill up this space ATI came up with the HD 4670 and HD 4550.
Considering the Indian PC gaming market which is in quite nascent stage considering that most of the audience is still on integrated graphics, the performance of lowend cards are of quite some importance. Say like an Nvidia FX 5200 is still the highest card sold in India till date. So this volume market requires something like that in the present age which can fill up the vacuum from ATI.
Similarly in the performance mainstream segment is for the audience who can afford a bit more and would want to game all latest games albeit at slightly lower settings and resolutions.
Moreover , now a days HTPC needs (LPCM 7.1 Audio, GPU HD Video Decoding) are also of utmost needs to the consumer , who are very particular about the requirements!
Whoa ! My language going totally haywire
hyeah: ...Anyway enough rants...lets get it started taking "Ruby" ka naam 
[BREAK=Page 2 : HD 4670 FaceOff]
Some salient features to begin with ...I know u guys want the pron pics ! But wait patience pays off
ATI Radeon HD™ 4600 Series – Key Features
* 320 Stream Processing Units- Enough power to tackle the most demanding HD games and applications.
* Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 - Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
* Enhanced Anti-Aliasing (AA) & Anisotropic Filtering (AF) - High performance anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing (4X AA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
* ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Technology - Dual mode ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ technology offers superior scalability.
* PCI Express 2.0 - Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
* Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) - UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experienceâ„¢ for the most processing-intensive content. Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture capabilities.
* Upscale Beyond 1080p - Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution1 and beyond.4
* Enhanced DVD Upscaling - Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling.4 The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
* Dynamic Contrast - Dynamic Contrast automatically adjusts the contrast and brightness during scenes to consistently deliver a crisp, vibrant picture.
* HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support delivering 8-channel audio. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of colors when connected to a capable HDTV.
* Integrated DisplayPort technology5 with audio
* Consumes Less Than 75 Watts under full load - ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 4600 Series graphics cards consume less than 75 watts under full load, eliminating the need for an external power connection and making them easy to install.
* Dynamic Power Management - ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series graphics cards feature ATI PowerPlayâ„¢ technology, delivering high performance when needed and conserving power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.6
* More Performance Per Watt - ATI Radeon HD 4600 series deliver up to 3x the performance per watt of AMD's previous generation GPUs.7
* Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process - Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process.
Ok so here is the card we are talking about. This is an AMD/ATI Engineering sample , so no fancy boxes and pu$$ies to please ya all
Front
Bare Back
[BREAK=Page 3 : HD 4670 Lets take off her dresses]
Now lets try taking off the cooler and check out if its really HOT! Inside
The PCB is quite simple and clean. Looks like that the GPU is fed by a 2-phase power whereas the memory is fed by the usual single phase.The memory chips used are Hynix 1ns DDR3 (1000MHZ DDR3).The core is quite tiny as we will see in the below pic compared to the RV 770 used on the HD 4850. Its also fabricated by TSMC on 55nm node.
[BREAK=Page 4 : HD 4670 Cool It]
Now coming to the cooler, the reference card is made fully out of copper and is quite heavy. There are a multitude of small fins inside which help in proper radiation of the heat. Those the RV 730 core is not expected at all to produce much heat as the TDP is quite low at below 70W, still its always better to keep her cool !
Coming to the outputs, this refernce (ES sample) card is equipped with a DVI port as well as 2 Display Ports. Now dont ask me why there are 2 of them , when an HDMI port would have been more useful. This is an early sample card and all retail cards in the market are expected to have an HDMI port or the ATI proprietary DVI to HDMI adapter bundled with the card
So I guess you guys are happy enough with the Bare & Dare ! pics. So lets move on to the HD 4550 now. Cmon the younger one also deserves a good look from you all
[BREAK=Page 5---HD 4550 : C'mon See Me]
To begin with the specs as usual, or rather the features...who wants the boring long tech specs:tongue:
ATI Radeon HD™ 4550 Graphics Technology – Key Features
* 80 Stream Processing Units - Enough power to tackle demanding games and applications.
* DDR3 Memory - DDR3 memory provides better performance and more memory bandwidth than DDR2.
* Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 - Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
* Enhanced Anti-Aliasing (AA) & Anisotropic Filtering (AF) - High performance anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing (4X AA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
* ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Technology - Dual mode ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ technology offers superior scalability.
* PCI Express 2.0 - Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
* Upscale Beyond 1080p - Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p1 display resolution and beyond.5
* Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) - UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experienceâ„¢ for the most processing-intensive content. You can also take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture capabilities.
* Enhanced DVD Upscaling - Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling.1 The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
* HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support delivering 8-channel audio. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of colors when connected to a capable HDTV.
* Integrated DisplayPort technology7 with audio - DisplayPort is an innovative digital solution that supports the latest graphics and LCD technologies.
* Consumes less than 25 watts under full load - The ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 4550 graphics card consumes less than 25 watts under full load, making it the ideal choice for implementation across a large diverse install base of desktop PCs.
* Dynamic Power Management - ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card features ATI PowerPlayâ„¢ technology, delivering high performance when needed and conserving power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.8
* Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process - Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process.
* Stability & Reliability - AMD's award-winning ATI Catalystâ„¢ graphics software and drivers deliver unprecedented graphics stability and reliability.
* Industry Leading Technical Support - Owners of ATI Radeonâ„¢ Certified graphics products have free access to a comprehensive online knowledge base and technical support (some conditions may apply, check http://support.ati.comfor more details).
We will take up few of this points later in our review and check out what all is hoopla is about !
So here is the card...another Engineering Sample !
Front
Phew she is all covered with black burkah :O
Back
Good to See all bared here
Lets continue to next page to see if she "Dares to Bare"
[BREAK=Page 6---HD 4550 : Dare to Bare]
Well taking apart the fill-cover cooler was quite easy. The usual screws and the X-mechanism with screws to hold the GPU. Lets have a look at it
Same as the HD 4670, its also 2 phase power for GPU, the PCB is clean and simple. The left hand top side has been shaved off and the passive cooler engulfs all the space it needs to run the GPU cool and quiet ! The memeory chips used in this card are the Samsung 1.2ns DDR3 modules operating at 800Mhz DDR.
Now the obligatory core shot of the RV 710XT GPU. Its damn tiny , just compare to the size of the 1 rupee coin.
Lets move on to the next page to have a look at the cooler and the output ports
[BREAK=Page 7---HD 4550 : Keep Me Cool]
Now as we said, the TDP of the HD 4550 is just 25W. That in itself is a kind of record for lowest power consumption in a discrete GPU. So a passive cooling is an ideal candidate for this card. The reference card is just cooled by a big fully covered black heatsink which have numerous small vertical fins to dissipate the heat. Of course I would tell even that is overkill for this card as the core runs very cool, but its always nice to have the padding arnd ! Right is it nt(perverts go away :rofl
Looking at the o/p of this card, seems this ES reference sample has got it 100% right. 1 DVI port, 1 HDMI port + 1 Display port. That is just what an HTPC guy would die for. Cmon even some 20k cards dnt feature all of this :hap2:
Now lets find out the poor rig on which these card were tested
[BREAK=Page 8---Rig Specs/Software Specs]
Here is the test system
Q6600 on Gigabyte Ep31-DS3L
2 X 1GB AxeRam
CM Realpower 550W
Windows XP SP3 32-bit/ Windows Vista SP1 32-bit
Catalyst 8.11 RC2 (Farcry2 Hotfix driver)
Testing Methodology
The CPU Q6600 was overclocked to take any CPU bottlenecking out of question (I know it was nt needed but still lemme brag about my Q6600)
Now in this review , I am trying out a new methodology. I tried finding the best playable resolution and detail setting for each game for the HD 4550 first. Then at the same settings, the performance of the HD 4670 was compared to the HD 4550. This is marked as Settings 1 in all the graphs.
Next what we tried is to try and get the best playable settings and resolution for the HD 4670 in which gameplay experience is smooth. So basically this methodology will help in finding the best resolution and settings at which each game can be played for both the cards. Plus we get a comparison of the performance of both of them as well. To end with , we have the synthetic 3D Mark for people who are looking at the absolute numbers. So the graphs may look a bit bizaare, but I hope you guys will like it
Also most of the game benchies nos on each page is with a pic to start with , which is taken with Settings 1 / Settings which will be mentioned in the page. So may be some sort of idea of the IQ as well, though w/o an ingame experience its impossble to notice the differnce with a static pic.
Now before all the carnage begins ! You two please smile
[BREAK=Page 9---Benchmarks : GRID]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 1)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, 2x MSAA, all medium, motion blur & Wind off, reflections-particles-shadows off
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, 4x MSAA, overall high profile)
As we can see HD 4670 really runs very well in this game. Fo rthe HD 4550 it looks quite good for a card in this price range.
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- 100% playable at 1440X900 or below with decent eyecandy
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 with a lot of eyecandy
[BREAK=Page 10---Benchmarks : FarCry2]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 3)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, Perf-- Very High ,Render Q--Medium, no AA, no HDR)
Settings 2 :- 1440 X 900, render Q--High, shader & geometry--high)
Settings 3 :- 1680X 1050 , render Q-high, shader & geometry--medium)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- not quite playable at 1440X900 or below with decent eyecandy. Need to reduce eyecandy by quite a lot
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 with a lot of eyecandy.
[BREAK=Page 11---Benchmarks : FEAR]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 1)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, All max settings, soft shadows on, 2x AA, 8x AF)
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, All max settings, soft shadows on, 4x AA, 8x AF)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- Its actually unbelievable how smooth the game runs with almost maxed out settings for a card in this segment. 100% playable with lot of eyecandy @ 1440 X 900
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 or below with maxed out seetings, with decent AA & AF as well
[BREAK=Page 12---Benchmarks : Crysis Warhead]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 1)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, no AA, Performance profile)
Settings 2 :- 1440X900, no AA, Mainstream profile)
Settings 3 :- 1680X1050, no AA, Mainstream profile)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- Just good enough to play at the lowest settings available on the 1440X900 resolution. Doesn't look good at all I know, but still playable at the cost of almost no eyecandy !
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 or below with medium settings , mainstream profile. Choosing Gamer profile even at 1440X900 gets the min fps to almost 15 at quite a lot of places making it quite unplayable.
[BREAK=Page 13---Benchmarks : Brother in Arms-Hell's Highway]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 2)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, no AA, all in-game Medium profile)
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, no AA, all in-game High profile)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- Well finally some disappointment here. The firepower in a HD 4550 is nt just enough to play with medium settings. So playable at 1440X900 or below with low settings, which looks quite horrible
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 or below with high settings. The game looks quite gorgeous at these settings as evident from the pic.
[BREAK=Page 14---Benchmarks : World in Conflict]
Sorry, but I seem to have misplaced the in-game pic of this. You guys have to make up with just the nos
Settings 1 :- Seaside, 1440 X 900, no AA, medium)
Settings 2 :- Seaside, 1680X1050, no AA, high, 2x AF)
Verdict :
HD 4550---- Runs a bit slow at the above settings. But for this kind of game it is quite playable. Run down the settings a bit and 100% gameplay guaranteed at 1440X900.
HD 4670--- As long as AA is not kicked in , it runs fine at 1680X1050 or below. The huge outer world textures really slows down the game once high levels of AA/AF is applied.
[BREAK=Page 15---Benchmarks : Call of Duty 4]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 2)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, no AA, lowest AF, others maxed out)
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, 2x AA, all in-game maxed, 16x AF)
Verdict :
HD 4550---- 100% playable at no AA and just entry level AF in 1440X900.
HD 4670--- 100% playable @ 1680X1050 with whatever eyecandy you throw as long as AA is notched too high. Looks beautiful
[BREAK=Page 16---Benchmarks : Synthetic Benchmarks]
Futuremark 3DMark 06
Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
Nothing much to comment on the above nos ! Doesn't make much sense as we have already seen so much of real pr0n !
[BREAK=Page 17---HTPC Hiatus : HD Video Decoding]
Now finally we have got over the long benchmarking session, we can move over to the HTPC crowd where silent operation, low power consumption, HD Video decoding capabilities are of prime importance.
First we will start off with HD Video decoding. The setup used is as following :
Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz + 2GB RAM
Creative X-Fi Fatal1y FPS
Windows Vista 32-bit
Mplayer Classic Home Cinema
1080p H.264 Movie (DayWatch) MKV container
IN Vista the EVR renderer was used with Mplayer-HC to get the GPU do the decoding. To get the nos for CPU decoding overlay renderer(default) or KMPlayer was used. The 780G chipset based M3A78-EM mobo coupled with an AMD X2 5200+ (2.7Ghz) was also used to check upon its HD Decoding viability.
So here are the nos.
Here is a screenshot of the movie with the 780G
[BREAK=Page 18---HTPC Hiatus : Continued]
Next is a screenshot showing CPU decoding with KMPlayer. As you will see a CPU running at 3.6Ghz....even at that speed one core is almost occupied 50%. That shows the amount of firepower required for H.264 decoding.
Same shot with a HD 4550. Damn....just 1% CPU usage.
Just see the task manager. Almost all of the cores are idle and the GPU is doing all the job. To make sure that GPU was doing the decoding, I had fired GPU-Z as well, as the clocks did ramp up from the 2D clocks to the low-power 3D clocks. So its GPU Video decoding at work
The quality is just fantastic to be honest, though now a days its expected out of even entry level discrete video cards to provide top notch quality.
[BREAK=Page 19---HTPC Hiatus : Power Consumption and Noise]
Here are some power consumption nos. APC suite was the software used to monitor the power being extracted by the system. Its not 100% correct but at least gives us a general idea about the whole thing. HD 4850 power consumption was taken into account to just put things into perspective
Here are the 2D/3D Clocks being used by the reference cards:
2D 3D
HD 4550 --- 110/300(core/mem)---600/800 (core/mem)
HD 4670 --- 165/250(core/mem)---800/1000(core/mem)
HD 4850 --- 500/750(core/mem)---625/993(core/mem)
So as we can see the HD 4550 has some seriously low power consumption and is surely the one of the lowest power consuming discrete video card that has been made. Even at around 20W average load power consumption, this gives quite a lot of firepower for entry level gaming as well HTPC purposes.
The HD 4670 on the otherhand pulls quite some power compared to the HD 4550 , but the firepower available is almost 3 times that of the younger sibling, so its understandable.
Coming to fan noise, the HD 4550 had a total passive cooler , so no questions regarding that. For the HD 4670 the fan was inaudible as long as fan speed is below 60%. At those fan speeds , the max reported load temps were like just 65 degrees. So both the cards will perfectly fit for any HTPC use.
[BREAK=Page 20---Overclocking]
HD 4670.
We tried ocing the card through CCC only and it was perfectly stable at the maxed out speeds of 800/1050 Mhz (core/memory). Here is a pic with the nos of 3D Mark Vantage for the same at these oced speeds:
HD 4550
The OCability of this card was almost nil as even a bump of 20Mhz to the core resulted in instability.It could be either because of the ultra low voltage being fed to the RV 710XT core to reduce the power consumption as much as possible.It doesn't make much sense to overclock this card and get only minuscule lump of performance.
All in all, dont expect much ocability in both the cards as the HD 4670 is already clocked quite high at 750Mhz stock, whereas the HD 4550 is tuned for ultra low power consumption rather than for enthusiasts for ocability.
[BREAK=Page 21---Conclusion & VFM Quotient]
First thing I have to say is , I am tired...phew this was a very long and tiring review. All thanks to the amount of nos I had to collect for the review.
Anyways lets talk about the pretty things :
HD 4670
If you ask me, out of both the cards, I was more impressed with the HD 4670. A tremendous amount of shader power coupled with very good HTPC abilities make this is a winner. Anyone having a 22" can easily turn on the eyecandy to almost the highest level , leaving AA to acceptable levels, and still get decent frame rates out of the card. This kind of performance for a card of this size and segment has never been seen.
The US MSRP of the product is 80$ with 512MB DDR3 memory. Models with more memory of course will cost a bit more, though it won't give you much mileage for sure for the extra memory. Coming to Indian price, this got launched at a bad time, when $ is at its highest point compared to INR.The street prices are now supposed to be around 5.5k +taxes as conveyed to me.
There is no denying the fact that this price is quite high. I hope AMD India takes a notice of this fact and can get the price downwards of 5k all inclusive. Cmon we need to get this selling in the mainstream segment where people will go for an inferior card just for saving 1k. I will cut the rating by half star because of this sore pricing.
To Sum up here are the Pros & Cons
Pros:-
* Very good performance at 1680X1050 or below with lots of eyecandy
* Very good AF performance in most games even with 128-bit memory interface
* Low power consumption for a card of this firepower.A good quality 350W PSU should be good enough.
* Excellent HD Video Decoding and IQ in movies as well as games.
* Low noise fan and cool running card.
Cons:-
*No HDMI port in reference sample card(Should not be a problem in retail samples)
* Priced too high for this segment.
So here is what we give to her. Cmon smile please
HD 4670
HD 4550
This card has one of the lowest power consumption I have seen for a video card ever. Cmon 20W on load is just amazing. Kudos to ATI for designing the RV 710. This card is not perfect for any person who will game regularly. This is for the audience who games rather once in blue moon, that also in rather multiplayer games like CSS, Portal, COD4 where not a lot of firepower is required. Its also desirable to keep the eyecandy to a minimum and the resolution down to 1440X900 or below as evident from our benchmarks.
On the other hand this is the perfect candidate for someone building an HTPC.
Coming to the pricing, the MSRP is arnd 40-45$. Again recommended pricing by AMD for this is almost 3.5k+taxes which by any standards is quite high. We expect a pricing of arnd 2.5k all inclusive to make this card attractive enough for the huge IGP market . Cmon Intel still has 70% of the video card market....and still no one wants to change it
. We hope the pricing will stabilize soon as well as availability also as I have been not able to locate a retail sample of HD 4550 from any vendor here in India.
To Sum up here are the Pros & Cons
Pros:-
* Ultra Low power consumption even at load.
* Fully passive card
* DVI + HDMI + Displayport O/Ps
* Excellent HTPC capabilities
Cons :-
* Quite low performance in games
* Horrendously priced
We are sad for her, that we will have to give a slightly low rating for this product maily because of the bad pricing as well heavily cut down performance in games. Still its nothing bad...and better than what the competitor has to offer
HD 4550
Now time to bid good bye to the pretty Ruby(s) again.
Thanks a lot to "Lord Dagon" (Preetham) for helping me in compiling some nos for me on the HD 4670. Cheers
Lastly thanks to AMD India for providing us the sample cards without which this wouldn't have been possible. Sorry for the long delay in publishing this review as well, but I hope its worth the delay.
Keep the bricks and bats coming.
Finally I can take a nap
Ciao
Supra
PS :
Digg the article here
Digg - ATI Radeon HD 4670 & HD4550 Review
To start about things, ATI(acquired by AMD) has been on a roll with their HD 4800 series. The series thwarted Nvidia of their throne at the performance-mainstream as well as the Enthusiast range.But the 9600GT and 9500GT from Nvidia are still ruling the roost at the mainstream and entry level scene in India as well as worldwide. To fill up this space ATI came up with the HD 4670 and HD 4550.
Considering the Indian PC gaming market which is in quite nascent stage considering that most of the audience is still on integrated graphics, the performance of lowend cards are of quite some importance. Say like an Nvidia FX 5200 is still the highest card sold in India till date. So this volume market requires something like that in the present age which can fill up the vacuum from ATI.
Similarly in the performance mainstream segment is for the audience who can afford a bit more and would want to game all latest games albeit at slightly lower settings and resolutions.
Moreover , now a days HTPC needs (LPCM 7.1 Audio, GPU HD Video Decoding) are also of utmost needs to the consumer , who are very particular about the requirements!
Whoa ! My language going totally haywire
hyeah: ...Anyway enough rants...lets get it started taking "Ruby" ka naam
[BREAK=Page 2 : HD 4670 FaceOff]
Some salient features to begin with ...I know u guys want the pron pics ! But wait patience pays off
ATI Radeon HD™ 4600 Series – Key Features
* 320 Stream Processing Units- Enough power to tackle the most demanding HD games and applications.
* Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 - Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
* Enhanced Anti-Aliasing (AA) & Anisotropic Filtering (AF) - High performance anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing (4X AA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
* ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Technology - Dual mode ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ technology offers superior scalability.
* PCI Express 2.0 - Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
* Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) - UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experienceâ„¢ for the most processing-intensive content. Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture capabilities.
* Upscale Beyond 1080p - Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution1 and beyond.4
* Enhanced DVD Upscaling - Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling.4 The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
* Dynamic Contrast - Dynamic Contrast automatically adjusts the contrast and brightness during scenes to consistently deliver a crisp, vibrant picture.
* HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support delivering 8-channel audio. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of colors when connected to a capable HDTV.
* Integrated DisplayPort technology5 with audio
* Consumes Less Than 75 Watts under full load - ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 4600 Series graphics cards consume less than 75 watts under full load, eliminating the need for an external power connection and making them easy to install.
* Dynamic Power Management - ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series graphics cards feature ATI PowerPlayâ„¢ technology, delivering high performance when needed and conserving power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.6
* More Performance Per Watt - ATI Radeon HD 4600 series deliver up to 3x the performance per watt of AMD's previous generation GPUs.7
* Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process - Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process.
Ok so here is the card we are talking about. This is an AMD/ATI Engineering sample , so no fancy boxes and pu$$ies to please ya all
Front
Bare Back
[BREAK=Page 3 : HD 4670 Lets take off her dresses]
Now lets try taking off the cooler and check out if its really HOT! Inside
The PCB is quite simple and clean. Looks like that the GPU is fed by a 2-phase power whereas the memory is fed by the usual single phase.The memory chips used are Hynix 1ns DDR3 (1000MHZ DDR3).The core is quite tiny as we will see in the below pic compared to the RV 770 used on the HD 4850. Its also fabricated by TSMC on 55nm node.
[BREAK=Page 4 : HD 4670 Cool It]
Now coming to the cooler, the reference card is made fully out of copper and is quite heavy. There are a multitude of small fins inside which help in proper radiation of the heat. Those the RV 730 core is not expected at all to produce much heat as the TDP is quite low at below 70W, still its always better to keep her cool !
Coming to the outputs, this refernce (ES sample) card is equipped with a DVI port as well as 2 Display Ports. Now dont ask me why there are 2 of them , when an HDMI port would have been more useful. This is an early sample card and all retail cards in the market are expected to have an HDMI port or the ATI proprietary DVI to HDMI adapter bundled with the card
So I guess you guys are happy enough with the Bare & Dare ! pics. So lets move on to the HD 4550 now. Cmon the younger one also deserves a good look from you all
[BREAK=Page 5---HD 4550 : C'mon See Me]
To begin with the specs as usual, or rather the features...who wants the boring long tech specs:tongue:
ATI Radeon HD™ 4550 Graphics Technology – Key Features
* 80 Stream Processing Units - Enough power to tackle demanding games and applications.
* DDR3 Memory - DDR3 memory provides better performance and more memory bandwidth than DDR2.
* Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 - Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
* Enhanced Anti-Aliasing (AA) & Anisotropic Filtering (AF) - High performance anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing (4X AA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
* ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ Technology - Dual mode ATI CrossFireXâ„¢ technology offers superior scalability.
* PCI Express 2.0 - Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
* Upscale Beyond 1080p - Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p1 display resolution and beyond.5
* Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) - UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experienceâ„¢ for the most processing-intensive content. You can also take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture capabilities.
* Enhanced DVD Upscaling - Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling.1 The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
* HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support delivering 8-channel audio. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of colors when connected to a capable HDTV.
* Integrated DisplayPort technology7 with audio - DisplayPort is an innovative digital solution that supports the latest graphics and LCD technologies.
* Consumes less than 25 watts under full load - The ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 4550 graphics card consumes less than 25 watts under full load, making it the ideal choice for implementation across a large diverse install base of desktop PCs.
* Dynamic Power Management - ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card features ATI PowerPlayâ„¢ technology, delivering high performance when needed and conserving power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.8
* Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process - Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process.
* Stability & Reliability - AMD's award-winning ATI Catalystâ„¢ graphics software and drivers deliver unprecedented graphics stability and reliability.
* Industry Leading Technical Support - Owners of ATI Radeonâ„¢ Certified graphics products have free access to a comprehensive online knowledge base and technical support (some conditions may apply, check http://support.ati.comfor more details).
We will take up few of this points later in our review and check out what all is hoopla is about !
So here is the card...another Engineering Sample !
Front
Phew she is all covered with black burkah :O
Back
Good to See all bared here
Lets continue to next page to see if she "Dares to Bare"
[BREAK=Page 6---HD 4550 : Dare to Bare]
Well taking apart the fill-cover cooler was quite easy. The usual screws and the X-mechanism with screws to hold the GPU. Lets have a look at it
Same as the HD 4670, its also 2 phase power for GPU, the PCB is clean and simple. The left hand top side has been shaved off and the passive cooler engulfs all the space it needs to run the GPU cool and quiet ! The memeory chips used in this card are the Samsung 1.2ns DDR3 modules operating at 800Mhz DDR.
Now the obligatory core shot of the RV 710XT GPU. Its damn tiny , just compare to the size of the 1 rupee coin.
Lets move on to the next page to have a look at the cooler and the output ports
[BREAK=Page 7---HD 4550 : Keep Me Cool]
Now as we said, the TDP of the HD 4550 is just 25W. That in itself is a kind of record for lowest power consumption in a discrete GPU. So a passive cooling is an ideal candidate for this card. The reference card is just cooled by a big fully covered black heatsink which have numerous small vertical fins to dissipate the heat. Of course I would tell even that is overkill for this card as the core runs very cool, but its always nice to have the padding arnd ! Right is it nt(perverts go away :rofl
Looking at the o/p of this card, seems this ES reference sample has got it 100% right. 1 DVI port, 1 HDMI port + 1 Display port. That is just what an HTPC guy would die for. Cmon even some 20k cards dnt feature all of this :hap2:
Now lets find out the poor rig on which these card were tested
[BREAK=Page 8---Rig Specs/Software Specs]
Here is the test system
Q6600 on Gigabyte Ep31-DS3L
2 X 1GB AxeRam
CM Realpower 550W
Windows XP SP3 32-bit/ Windows Vista SP1 32-bit
Catalyst 8.11 RC2 (Farcry2 Hotfix driver)
Testing Methodology
The CPU Q6600 was overclocked to take any CPU bottlenecking out of question (I know it was nt needed but still lemme brag about my Q6600)
Now in this review , I am trying out a new methodology. I tried finding the best playable resolution and detail setting for each game for the HD 4550 first. Then at the same settings, the performance of the HD 4670 was compared to the HD 4550. This is marked as Settings 1 in all the graphs.
Next what we tried is to try and get the best playable settings and resolution for the HD 4670 in which gameplay experience is smooth. So basically this methodology will help in finding the best resolution and settings at which each game can be played for both the cards. Plus we get a comparison of the performance of both of them as well. To end with , we have the synthetic 3D Mark for people who are looking at the absolute numbers. So the graphs may look a bit bizaare, but I hope you guys will like it
Also most of the game benchies nos on each page is with a pic to start with , which is taken with Settings 1 / Settings which will be mentioned in the page. So may be some sort of idea of the IQ as well, though w/o an ingame experience its impossble to notice the differnce with a static pic.
Now before all the carnage begins ! You two please smile
[BREAK=Page 9---Benchmarks : GRID]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 1)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, 2x MSAA, all medium, motion blur & Wind off, reflections-particles-shadows off
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, 4x MSAA, overall high profile)
As we can see HD 4670 really runs very well in this game. Fo rthe HD 4550 it looks quite good for a card in this price range.
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- 100% playable at 1440X900 or below with decent eyecandy
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 with a lot of eyecandy
[BREAK=Page 10---Benchmarks : FarCry2]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 3)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, Perf-- Very High ,Render Q--Medium, no AA, no HDR)
Settings 2 :- 1440 X 900, render Q--High, shader & geometry--high)
Settings 3 :- 1680X 1050 , render Q-high, shader & geometry--medium)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- not quite playable at 1440X900 or below with decent eyecandy. Need to reduce eyecandy by quite a lot
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 with a lot of eyecandy.
[BREAK=Page 11---Benchmarks : FEAR]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 1)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, All max settings, soft shadows on, 2x AA, 8x AF)
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, All max settings, soft shadows on, 4x AA, 8x AF)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- Its actually unbelievable how smooth the game runs with almost maxed out settings for a card in this segment. 100% playable with lot of eyecandy @ 1440 X 900
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 or below with maxed out seetings, with decent AA & AF as well
[BREAK=Page 12---Benchmarks : Crysis Warhead]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 1)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, no AA, Performance profile)
Settings 2 :- 1440X900, no AA, Mainstream profile)
Settings 3 :- 1680X1050, no AA, Mainstream profile)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- Just good enough to play at the lowest settings available on the 1440X900 resolution. Doesn't look good at all I know, but still playable at the cost of almost no eyecandy !
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 or below with medium settings , mainstream profile. Choosing Gamer profile even at 1440X900 gets the min fps to almost 15 at quite a lot of places making it quite unplayable.
[BREAK=Page 13---Benchmarks : Brother in Arms-Hell's Highway]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 2)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, no AA, all in-game Medium profile)
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, no AA, all in-game High profile)
Verdict :
HD 4550 --- Well finally some disappointment here. The firepower in a HD 4550 is nt just enough to play with medium settings. So playable at 1440X900 or below with low settings, which looks quite horrible
HD 4670 --- 100% playable at 1680X 1050 or below with high settings. The game looks quite gorgeous at these settings as evident from the pic.
[BREAK=Page 14---Benchmarks : World in Conflict]
Sorry, but I seem to have misplaced the in-game pic of this. You guys have to make up with just the nos
Settings 1 :- Seaside, 1440 X 900, no AA, medium)
Settings 2 :- Seaside, 1680X1050, no AA, high, 2x AF)
Verdict :
HD 4550---- Runs a bit slow at the above settings. But for this kind of game it is quite playable. Run down the settings a bit and 100% gameplay guaranteed at 1440X900.
HD 4670--- As long as AA is not kicked in , it runs fine at 1680X1050 or below. The huge outer world textures really slows down the game once high levels of AA/AF is applied.
[BREAK=Page 15---Benchmarks : Call of Duty 4]
InGame Pic Settings : (Settings 2)
Settings 1 :- 1440 X 900, no AA, lowest AF, others maxed out)
Settings 2 :- 1680X1050, 2x AA, all in-game maxed, 16x AF)
Verdict :
HD 4550---- 100% playable at no AA and just entry level AF in 1440X900.
HD 4670--- 100% playable @ 1680X1050 with whatever eyecandy you throw as long as AA is notched too high. Looks beautiful
[BREAK=Page 16---Benchmarks : Synthetic Benchmarks]
Futuremark 3DMark 06
Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
Nothing much to comment on the above nos ! Doesn't make much sense as we have already seen so much of real pr0n !
[BREAK=Page 17---HTPC Hiatus : HD Video Decoding]
Now finally we have got over the long benchmarking session, we can move over to the HTPC crowd where silent operation, low power consumption, HD Video decoding capabilities are of prime importance.
First we will start off with HD Video decoding. The setup used is as following :
Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz + 2GB RAM
Creative X-Fi Fatal1y FPS
Windows Vista 32-bit
Mplayer Classic Home Cinema
1080p H.264 Movie (DayWatch) MKV container
IN Vista the EVR renderer was used with Mplayer-HC to get the GPU do the decoding. To get the nos for CPU decoding overlay renderer(default) or KMPlayer was used. The 780G chipset based M3A78-EM mobo coupled with an AMD X2 5200+ (2.7Ghz) was also used to check upon its HD Decoding viability.
So here are the nos.
Here is a screenshot of the movie with the 780G
[BREAK=Page 18---HTPC Hiatus : Continued]
Next is a screenshot showing CPU decoding with KMPlayer. As you will see a CPU running at 3.6Ghz....even at that speed one core is almost occupied 50%. That shows the amount of firepower required for H.264 decoding.
Same shot with a HD 4550. Damn....just 1% CPU usage.
Just see the task manager. Almost all of the cores are idle and the GPU is doing all the job. To make sure that GPU was doing the decoding, I had fired GPU-Z as well, as the clocks did ramp up from the 2D clocks to the low-power 3D clocks. So its GPU Video decoding at work
The quality is just fantastic to be honest, though now a days its expected out of even entry level discrete video cards to provide top notch quality.
[BREAK=Page 19---HTPC Hiatus : Power Consumption and Noise]
Here are some power consumption nos. APC suite was the software used to monitor the power being extracted by the system. Its not 100% correct but at least gives us a general idea about the whole thing. HD 4850 power consumption was taken into account to just put things into perspective
Here are the 2D/3D Clocks being used by the reference cards:
2D 3D
HD 4550 --- 110/300(core/mem)---600/800 (core/mem)
HD 4670 --- 165/250(core/mem)---800/1000(core/mem)
HD 4850 --- 500/750(core/mem)---625/993(core/mem)
So as we can see the HD 4550 has some seriously low power consumption and is surely the one of the lowest power consuming discrete video card that has been made. Even at around 20W average load power consumption, this gives quite a lot of firepower for entry level gaming as well HTPC purposes.
The HD 4670 on the otherhand pulls quite some power compared to the HD 4550 , but the firepower available is almost 3 times that of the younger sibling, so its understandable.
Coming to fan noise, the HD 4550 had a total passive cooler , so no questions regarding that. For the HD 4670 the fan was inaudible as long as fan speed is below 60%. At those fan speeds , the max reported load temps were like just 65 degrees. So both the cards will perfectly fit for any HTPC use.
[BREAK=Page 20---Overclocking]
HD 4670.
We tried ocing the card through CCC only and it was perfectly stable at the maxed out speeds of 800/1050 Mhz (core/memory). Here is a pic with the nos of 3D Mark Vantage for the same at these oced speeds:
HD 4550
The OCability of this card was almost nil as even a bump of 20Mhz to the core resulted in instability.It could be either because of the ultra low voltage being fed to the RV 710XT core to reduce the power consumption as much as possible.It doesn't make much sense to overclock this card and get only minuscule lump of performance.
All in all, dont expect much ocability in both the cards as the HD 4670 is already clocked quite high at 750Mhz stock, whereas the HD 4550 is tuned for ultra low power consumption rather than for enthusiasts for ocability.
[BREAK=Page 21---Conclusion & VFM Quotient]
First thing I have to say is , I am tired
...phew this was a very long and tiring review. All thanks to the amount of nos I had to collect for the review. Anyways lets talk about the pretty things :
HD 4670
If you ask me, out of both the cards, I was more impressed with the HD 4670. A tremendous amount of shader power coupled with very good HTPC abilities make this is a winner. Anyone having a 22" can easily turn on the eyecandy to almost the highest level , leaving AA to acceptable levels, and still get decent frame rates out of the card. This kind of performance for a card of this size and segment has never been seen.
The US MSRP of the product is 80$ with 512MB DDR3 memory. Models with more memory of course will cost a bit more, though it won't give you much mileage for sure for the extra memory. Coming to Indian price, this got launched at a bad time, when $ is at its highest point compared to INR.The street prices are now supposed to be around 5.5k +taxes as conveyed to me.
There is no denying the fact that this price is quite high. I hope AMD India takes a notice of this fact and can get the price downwards of 5k all inclusive. Cmon we need to get this selling in the mainstream segment where people will go for an inferior card just for saving 1k. I will cut the rating by half star because of this sore pricing.
To Sum up here are the Pros & Cons
Pros:-
* Very good performance at 1680X1050 or below with lots of eyecandy
* Very good AF performance in most games even with 128-bit memory interface
* Low power consumption for a card of this firepower.A good quality 350W PSU should be good enough.
* Excellent HD Video Decoding and IQ in movies as well as games.
* Low noise fan and cool running card.
Cons:-
*No HDMI port in reference sample card(Should not be a problem in retail samples)
* Priced too high for this segment.
So here is what we give to her. Cmon smile please
HD 4670
HD 4550
This card has one of the lowest power consumption I have seen for a video card ever. Cmon 20W on load is just amazing. Kudos to ATI for designing the RV 710. This card is not perfect for any person who will game regularly. This is for the audience who games rather once in blue moon, that also in rather multiplayer games like CSS, Portal, COD4 where not a lot of firepower is required. Its also desirable to keep the eyecandy to a minimum and the resolution down to 1440X900 or below as evident from our benchmarks.
On the other hand this is the perfect candidate for someone building an HTPC.
Coming to the pricing, the MSRP is arnd 40-45$. Again recommended pricing by AMD for this is almost 3.5k+taxes which by any standards is quite high. We expect a pricing of arnd 2.5k all inclusive to make this card attractive enough for the huge IGP market . Cmon Intel still has 70% of the video card market....and still no one wants to change it
. We hope the pricing will stabilize soon as well as availability also as I have been not able to locate a retail sample of HD 4550 from any vendor here in India.To Sum up here are the Pros & Cons
Pros:-
* Ultra Low power consumption even at load.
* Fully passive card
* DVI + HDMI + Displayport O/Ps
* Excellent HTPC capabilities
Cons :-
* Quite low performance in games
* Horrendously priced
We are sad for her, that we will have to give a slightly low rating for this product maily because of the bad pricing as well heavily cut down performance in games. Still its nothing bad...and better than what the competitor has to offer
HD 4550
Now time to bid good bye to the pretty Ruby(s) again.
Thanks a lot to "Lord Dagon" (Preetham) for helping me in compiling some nos for me on the HD 4670. Cheers
Lastly thanks to AMD India for providing us the sample cards without which this wouldn't have been possible. Sorry for the long delay in publishing this review as well, but I hope its worth the delay.
Keep the bricks and bats coming.
Finally I can take a nap
Ciao
Supra
PS :
Digg the article here
Digg - ATI Radeon HD 4670 & HD4550 Review
