ATI HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 Video Card Review

Temperature Testing

What surprised us the most about the HD 4670 was the fact that its idle temperatures were as good as they seemed to be. We assume that this is due to the 55nm manufacturing process but we can see that when under load, temperatures rapidly increase. 81 degrees is well within the norms for a card with such a small heatsink but we can all see how well the 9500 GT does with a similarly minute cooler.

Acoustical Properties

Due to the fact that there really isn’t much heat to disperse from the RV 730XT core, the fan on this card can spin at a leisurely pace while maintaining acceptable temperatures. Without a doubt, this means that the HD 4670 will be right at home in an HTPC where silence is what most people look for.

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.


Overall, the power consumption of this card was very, very good when taking into account its performance in all of our tests. ATI has stated quite plainly that they want to be on top of the performance per watt category and it looks like the HD 4670 succeeds in this area much better than was expected. Idle power draw is absolutely excellent and load consumption is just above the much lower-performing 9500 GT.