Radeon HD 4670: A perfect balance?

macros · Post by **macros** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:24 pm

thejamppa wrote:Hi Macros!

What I've heard, Gigabyte's fan is fixed speed. You better avoid that or get something like His iSilence 4 series passively cooled 4670. Or then you can change the stock cooler into passive cooler like Zalman VFN-100 HP which fits and is capable of cooling HD 4670 in case with good ventilation

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately I'm looking for something with native HDMI onboard, don't have the space for an adapter (and not sure if they can pass the audio).

Might look at getting the passive cooler, pretty sure the ventilation will be enough. Most of the time it'll be used for movies, but thinking of a little light gaming as well.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:29 pm

Native HDMI + Passive cooling = Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate... Or any generic card with HDMI if you change heatsink. My Asus HD 4670 512M / HDMI had horrible 2000 rpm fixed fan. I removed it and heatsink and put Zalman passive cooler, since Arctic Cooling's did not fit due motherboard configuration ( mAtx board )

macros · Post by **macros** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:55 pm

thejamppa wrote:Native HDMI + Passive cooling = Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate... Or any generic card with HDMI if you change heatsink. My Asus HD 4670 512M / HDMI had horrible 2000 rpm fixed fan. I removed it and heatsink and put Zalman passive cooler, since Arctic Cooling's did not fit due motherboard configuration ( mAtx board )

Can't find the Zalman cooler here in NZ, so the Sapphire Ultimate looks the way to go. Cheers for the suggestions!

RedAE102 · Post by **RedAE102** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:57 pm

For those who, like me, initially had issues with running multiple monitors, after some searching online, I found the solution to the problem. You must disable ATI Overdrive completely, which, when a second monitor is installed, locks the GPU memory to the full 1GHz, but still allows the core to throttle down to 200 MHz, instead of 165MHz core/250MHz when only one monitor is plugged in. All of the flickering went away as soon as I disabled ATI Overdrive in Catalyst Control Center, and hasn't returned. I'm now running Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) on a 22" Acer AL2216Wbd at 1680x1050 and a 19" Acer AL1916WAbd at 1440x900, and it works beautifully. I was quite sad when I couldn't run the second monitor, but now, I'm thrilled to put that 19" back to use.

Techno Pride · Post by **Techno Pride** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 12:54 am

Is anyone still interested in this card?

Just got a new Sapphire 4670 Ultimate 512mb. It's 165/250Mhz at idle. No idea about the voltage.

Idle and load temps much better than the previous 8500GT w/ Zalman HP-80A

b_rubenstein · Post by **b_rubenstein** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 3:27 am

I'm using that card in two of my PCs. The BIOS that the card ships with has the voltage set to 1.25v for all states. I used RBE and ATI Flash to change the voltages for different states.

You can change the idle voltage, but what state the card goes into at idle depends on the monitor, connection and refresh rate. My two cards have been flashed with the same BIOS image. The one that is connected to a 1600x1200 monitor via DVI idles at .95v. The one connected to a 1080i TV via HDMI idles at 1.20v. Both devices set to 60 Hz refresh.

shawk · Post by **shawk** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:04 am

Techno Pride wrote:Is anyone still interested in this card?

Yep, i've recently bought a second- first for a mid-power pc and second for a htpc that does a little gaming.

The price+performance is right for me, but the noise is far from tolerable and i've finally got some cash to sort it.

Is anyone cooling a 4870 in a sff machine like a shuttle? Looking at a Zalman VF-1000LED at the moment.

b_rubenstein · Post by **b_rubenstein** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 8:30 am

What noise? The Sapphire 4670 Ultimate is passively cooled and has no fan.

shawk · Post by **shawk** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:02 am

b_rubenstein wrote:What noise? The Sapphire 4670 Ultimate is passively cooled and has no fan.

Sorry heh, I have a fan cooled version ( Sapphire HD 4670 rather than the ultimate ) - the passive version was unavailable when I was buying.

johnoh · Post by **johnoh** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 4:59 pm

Just wanted to give my support to the Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate. I have two of them and they have excellent clock/voltage control so idle power is maybe 10W per card. Their heatsink is excellent - I replaced it with an Accelero S2 I had laying around and the temps went up by 2C, so I switched back.

merlyn · Post by **merlyn** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 2:30 pm

Well that's odd. I haven't been very happy with my Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate since I got it but just been too busy to do anything about it.
My case is very low airflow which may be the difference. CASE/CPU/PSU 1200rpm Slipstreams at 400rpm until SYS reaches 50C when they pop up to 900rpm.
After replacing the stock cooler with an S2 the idle temperature has dropped 10C and the load temp has dropped 30C. TIM hasn't even cured yet.
I never expected it to make that much difference, I'm over the moon!

MarkMan · Post by **MarkMan** » Tue Jan 26, 2010 8:04 pm

FYI... I have an ASUS EAH4670/DI/512/MD3/A with the gold "Asus" heatsink/fan on it. I tried undervolting by reprogramming the flash after modifying with RBE and that was a no-go. The fan is also pretty clearly not adjustable.

The fan wasn't terribly loud to begin with, but it was clearly louder than a stock AMD Athlon II fan when it spun down to around 1030rpm. There are missing parts near the fan connector and I ohmed out a couple zero ohm resistors going from the negative side of the fan to ground. I removed one of the zero ohm resistors and put a 1/2W 68ohm resistor from the fan's minus connection to ground. That dropped the voltage on the fan from 12V to 8.4V. In an open room (at 26C) the GPU measured about 60C under full load from OCCT test (which seemed to be the worst I'd found) with the fan at 12V. With the fan at 8.4V, the GPU rose to 64C. A simulator I use produces far less heat, so I'm not too worried.

I wish I could drop the GPU voltage down from 1.25V, but at least it clocks way down. This card just suits what I need.

Steve Teixera · Post by **Steve Teixera** » Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:01 pm

I got a Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate passive

10.1 drivers

Code: Select all

core  ram  volt
200   873  1.25
750   873  1.25

10.1 drivers (overdrive enabled)*

Code: Select all

core  ram  volt
165   250  1.25
300   500  1.25
750   873  1.25

* 2nd monitor flickering because of memory speed switches

used GPU-Z to export the bios, RBE to edit voltages and flashed the new bios with winflash

Code: Select all

core  ram  volt
200   873  0.9 
750   873  1.25

works fine with dual monitors (no flickering)

monitoring speeds only works with rivatuner (no vcore)
AOD is wrong on the memory speed but has vcore monitoring

Will test further undervolting.

If i use a dual monitor setup vga+dvi i can not clock down the memory with out flickering on the vga output. Anyone with the same problem?

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Mon Feb 01, 2010 8:30 pm

Steve Teixera wrote:
If i use a dual monitor setup vga+dvi i can not clock down the memory with out flickering on the vga output. Anyone with the same problem?

I seem to. I just added some stuff--first addition was a second monitor. This was using my 512MB Biostar 4670. It had clock and voltage changes in BIOS--when adding second monitor it would lock the memory to 1000. No flickering.

Just replaced it with a 1GB HIS model, and it does have flickering...need to do some more playing around with the speeds. The one thing I noticed was that they didn't seem to match up anyway with the first card--it would idle at 200/1000 which didn't show up in RBE anyway

lechuck · Post by **lechuck** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:16 am

@Steve Teixera: Can you measure to confirm voltage dropped after Bios edit? Was there a power consumption drop?

Steve Teixera · Post by **Steve Teixera** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 11:08 am

lechuck wrote:@Steve Teixera: Can you measure to confirm voltage dropped after Bios edit? Was there a power consumption drop?

Measured today and there is no powerconsumption drop from 200@1,25 to 200@0,9

So I flashed a bios with all voltages set to 0,9 volts.
In mind that 750@0,9 will not work (brick the card), but it is still working and at the same powerconsuption (idle and load).

so no voltage control on the Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate passive.

Klusu · Post by **Klusu** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 1:20 pm

johnoh wrote:Just wanted to give my support to the Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate. I have two of them and they have excellent clock/voltage control so idle power is maybe 10W per card....

ermi · Post by **ermi** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:00 pm

I hope I won't be too offtopic, because I have a more HTPC related question regarding the 4670 (and videocards in general).

I'm planning to get the 4670 fanless Ultimate version.

My plan is to put this videocard in the living room PC, so that it can be connected to both the PC monitor (via DVI) and the TV (HDMI).

Not only that, I want to be able to watch a movie over HDMI with sound over the same HDMI, while, at the same time, use the PC for browsing etc. and listening to a separate (not-movie) sound via the main soundcard. (One person would be watching the movie, the other would use the PC.)

Is this possible?

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:44 pm

ermi wrote:...I want to be able to watch a movie over HDMI with sound over the same HDMI, while, at the same time, use the PC for browsing etc. and listening to a separate (not-movie) sound via the main soundcard. (One person would be watching the movie, the other would use the PC.)

Is this possible?

Yes. For it to work, the software you use to play the movie would need to allow you to choose the audio output device.