Installation/Operation

Installation of our HIS HD4670 IceQ Turbo went better than usual.  Not that larger cards present an excessive amount of difficulty installing but rather I forgot how easy cable routing was with a shorter card.  Obviously, no space limitations were found or any other physical issues.  HIS' HD4670 IceQ Turbo fired up out of the box and we were up and running with Catalyst 8.10 drivers we downloaded off of the ATi website within minutes.

Temperature

The Catalyst Control Panel sensor gave us an idle GPU temperature reading of 36 degrees Celsius.  Our putting the GPU under load with Crysis for half an hour, we were able to work up the HIS card to 57 degrees Celsius.  The HIS IceQ cooler does a great job but then again, I believe it is safe to assume that the heat generated by the HD4670 is significantly less than its larger brothers.

Sound Level

The 75mm variable rate cooling fan of the IceQ cooler never spun up to an audible level.  Even while fragging away with all the case fans of our Zalman GT1000 Case turned off and the panel door open, nothing.

Performance

Our test bed is based around an ASUS Maximus Formula X38 based mainboard.  The OS is Windows Vista Home Premium installed on a Western Digital SATA II HDD.  Our comparison cards today are going to be a reference design Radeon HD4850 as well as a reference design Radeon HD4870 card to give you a good idea of where and how well the HD4670 card fits in.

Testing will be done with real world game play using frame rates recorded by the FRAPS program.  Results are graphed in three minute segments from three game titles, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and Assassin's Creed.  Inside each of these games, we have saved spots where we can record game play from a set location making the course of action easier to duplicate between test products.  Screen resolution and other settings will be listed out before each performance graph.  We will also be throwing in Futuremark's 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage in the benchmark rodeo as well.  ATi's Catalyst 8.10 drivers were used for all cards in all tests.

Results

As we have all seen before, Crysis is a true system buster.  Taking the HIS HD4670 IceQ Turbo and throwing it at what seems to be a common jump off point we ran Crysis at 1024x768 with FSAA turned off and all settings set to 'High'.

While the HD4850 and HD4870 ran neck and neck leaving the HD4670 behind, notice how well it did.  During game play I did notice two very short times where I could feel the card stumble but not enough to break the rhythm of play.  Very respectable performance for an $80 card.

Assassin's Creed is next up.  It is another DirectX 10 based game so we can better push new hardware.  All in game graphics settings were set at their maximum level with screen resolution set to 1920 x 1440 with FSAA was turned off through the Catalyst Control Panel as there is no in game setting to turn FSAA on or off.

Here the differences were more pronounced.  Assassin's Creed was playable at this resolution and settings with the HD4670 however, it lacked the fluid flow that makes it such a pleasure to play.  Let's shift over to a hold out from the DirectX 9 games.