HIS Radeon 4670, 4830 & 4850 Mid Range Round-Up
HIS 4670 IceQ
Published: 9th November 2008 | Source: HIS | Price: £N/A |
Specification & Packaging
Representing the budget end of the scale, we have the 4670. Whilst this GPU may have the lowest specification, it does feature the powerful IceQ cooler, hinting at a big pre-overclock. To our disappointment, however, it wasn't pre-overclocked and ran at the GPU's stock frequencies.
Here are the full specs:
Powered by Radeon® HD 4670 GPU
Innovative IceQ Cooling technology
320 stream processing units
DirectX® 10.1
24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
Dual mode ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
PCI Express® 2.0 support
Core Clock: 750mhz
Ramdac: 400mhz
Memory Size: 512mb
Memory Type: GDDR3
Memory Clock: 2000mhz
Memory Interface: 128bit
Innovative IceQ Cooling technology
320 stream processing units
DirectX® 10.1
24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
Dual mode ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
PCI Express® 2.0 support
Core Clock: 750mhz
Ramdac: 400mhz
Memory Size: 512mb
Memory Type: GDDR3
Memory Clock: 2000mhz
Memory Interface: 128bit
While the standard clocks of 750mhz core and 1000mhz memory are a bit of a disappointment, the custom cooler will hopefully mean the card runs cooler & quieter.
Packaging & Appearance
Although this card is far from a high-end card, HIS certainly haven’t cut corners on the packaging. It’s not too complicated and contains all the information you would want to see on the front of a box. It is printed on glossy card and feels very nice.
As you can see, HIS have taken the liberty of cutting a little window for you to view the card inside. The cooler dominates this window, and you can certainly tell this is far from standard. On the back of the box there is an in-depth specification of the card and the usual warranty & features information.
Once you have opened the initial packaging, you are presented with another box. This offers great protection to the card, ensuring it gets to you in pristine condition. Once you open the flap on the box, you can lift out the moulded plastic holding the card and accessories. Underneath the plastic is the driver CD and user manual.
There is a nice selection of accessories, although nothing out of the ordinary, such as the multi-function tool we saw with the 4850. Here you can see: User Manual, Crossfire bridge, D-Dub adapter, HDMI adapter, Warranty leaflet and driver CD.
Card Appearance
Once you have opened up the mould and taken the card out of its foam cushion, you can take a closer look at the card itself.
There was something that surprised us upon putting the card down - the cooler is longer than the card itself. Not only is it double the height of the stock cooler, but a good deal longer as well. The cooler is covered with an interesting graphic containing the HIS and IceQ logos. The fan is made out of transparent blue plastic; we were expecting it to contain an LED or two, but it seems HIS haven’t followed this trend.
Something which we noticed on close examination was that the cooler did not seem to come into contact with the card's memory modules.
Our suspicions seem to have been correct. As you can see, there is a fairly large amount of TIM on the core itself, yet the memory modules have none at all. The cooler doesn't seem to have been designed to accommodate the memory - let's hope this absence of cooling doesn't effect stability in any way.
Most Recent Comments
Nice review mate. That 4830 is a nice GPU, but it's just too close to the price of a reference 4850...
And that IceQ4 4850 is quite possibly the sexiest graphics card of the year.
And that IceQ4 4850 is quite possibly the sexiest graphics card of the year.
It is a rather lovely card.
As you say, the 4850 reference may pose a threat to the 4830, but even so, its still amazing value.
As you say, the 4850 reference may pose a threat to the 4830, but even so, its still amazing value.
Its nice to see ATI coming strong, may save AMD's neck from the great weilding intel axe that is i7...
How do u mean ?
(good article btw)
(good article btw)
well look at it a year back Nvidia pwning the graphics card market and Intel the CPU, the buyout of ATI by AMD, however lacklustre products from both sides of the ATI/AMD conglomerate, now ATI coming back with great products, it may just save them, AMD job cuts are rife and if you search round for AM2 motherboards they are getting thin on the ground as more motherboard manufacturers are gearing up for I7, with AMD's recent restructure into a development and manufacturing division rumours have been circulating that they may be pulling out of retail units and concentrating on OEM and server lines....this wouldn't exactly surprise me ...look at the X58 being both SLI/Xfire capable...this gives intel quite an advantage and does follow suit for the rumours mentioned above....theres zero news on any new desktop CPU's from AMD...it just looks like AMD are running for cover at the mo and maybe the 4000 series may just give them a lifeline...
Ah I see what u mean. Indeed, and I have a secret hope that their AM3 is going to be something to take note of. I would much rather be in a quandry over ordering new kit, other than just thinking i7.
yeah it takes the fun out of choosing new hardware. I just can't see how, other then the hand of god, how AMD are going to turn the tides, but there doing a cracking job with these cards, lets hope they keep it up...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by name='Jaster'
yeah it takes the fun out of choosing new hardware. I just can't see how, other then the hand of god, how AMD are going to turn the tides, but there doing a cracking job with these cards, lets hope they keep it up...
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So, with any luck, whatever they have been working on will be good...
P.s, thanks for all the postive feedback guys!!
Quote:
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Originally Posted by name='teknokid'
well, if you think about it, they havent had a massively new architecture for a while now.. phenom, in the end, was pretty similar to am2...
So, with any luck, whatever they have been working on will be good... P.s, thanks for all the postive feedback guys!! |
Unlike the 6400 black edition (which I actually own) whats the point in unlocking the multiplier when the chip runs at its thermal and operational limit anyway.
But I love a good underdog story, and amd are the underdog being dragged round a field of broken glass by intels big monster 4x4....
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HIS and ATI are striking back at the green team, find out which mid-range card came out on top here.