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ATI's Mainstream Challenge - PowerColor PCS HD 4670

By Vincent Chang - 10 Sep 2008

Conclusion

Conclusion

The coming months should see a wave of ATI cards sweep down from the mainstream to the entry level. And it seems that NVIDIA would be scrambling to spin something out of all this. The fact is that the GeForce 9 series presently is a convoluted mess of respun GPUs with more than a hint of 'remarriages'. The current response from NVIDIA now to any ATI development appears to be nothing more than looking through their existing SKUs and retro-fitting one to counter the new competitor in terms of performance and pricing. It's a reactive strategy that may not always work.

Many of the recent SKUs that we have seen from NVIDIA started life as a 65nm product, with 55nm versions 'forthcoming'. For example, the GeForce 9600 GSO, recommended by NVIDIA as the counter to the new Radeon HD 4670 is nothing but a 192-bit, crippled G92 and it's 80nm even. Extending the longevity of its present GPUs sounds great, except that NVIDIA seriously need its new GTX 200 architecture in a more compact, mainstream form and quick. If that is even possible, that is.

The introduction of the Radeon HD 4670 addresses the budget segment of the new Radeon HD 4000 series. However, if you discount the older Radeon HD 3800 series, there's still a significant performance gap between the Radeon HD 4600 and 4800 series.

PowerColor has gone with ZEROtherm again for its Radeon HD 4670 card. It's only marginally overclocked but at least, the move to a third party cooler has ensured that it is both quiet and cool. Performance too was very decent for its segment, with the PowerColor springing more than a few surprises in our testing.

With all the features that one can expect from a Radeon HD 4000 series card, including the potential for CrossFireX, the Radeon HD 4670 looks like an attractive prospect, especially at its recommended retail price of US$79. You can expect to pay a bit more for the PowerColor of course but the advantages should balance out. Hopefully, there will be passively cooled, low profile models from vendors in the future, as the Radeon HD 4600 series seem like a perfect HTPC GPU.

It's not all sunshine for ATI though. We did not include the scores for the Radeon HD 4850 in our benchmarks here because the performance gap is simply too wide. ATI now has a lack of 'new' Radeon 4000 cards to fill in the gap between a Radeon HD 4670 and a 4850. For now, it's relying on the older Radeon HD 3800 cards to do that job but that's only if you don't mind having slightly older features. However, word has it that ATI has something else up its sleeves and those who are interested in that price segment (US$100 - 150) should bide their time.

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