Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate 512MB Passive Video Card Review

A Closer Look at the Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate p.2

The heatpipes run the entire length of the primary fin assembly but there is one thing that bothers me a bit about this design: the fins aren’t oriented in the right direction to take advantage of the airflow within a case. While this may or may not have an impact on overall cooling performance, it would have been much preferable if this assembly was rotated at 90° so air could freely flow between the fins as it enters and then exits your enclosure.


There really isn’t much to see on the back side of the Ultimate other than the aforementioned heatsink and some of the GDDR3 memory ICs. That being said, Sapphire deserves some credit for attaching the heatsink with proper rubber washers so as not to damage the PCB in any way.


The memory used on this card boggles my mind. Sapphire used Hynix H5RS5223CFA N0C modules which are rated at 2Ghz DDR but instead chose to run them below 1800Mhz. What gives? Either they have timings that are tighter than a virg…oh, forget about that line… or the memory is running well under its rated speeds. While we won’t have an overclocking section in the review itself, stay tuned to the Comment Thread for full results.