Radeon HD 4670: A perfect balance?

kaotikfunk · Post by **kaotikfunk** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:51 pm

Thanks for posting your results on the Sapphire Ultimate. It's too bad it doesn't have working powerplay. Looking at the numbers though, the idle consumption is still similar to my Asus EAH3650 silent. The 4670 can max out game settings at my 1440x900 resolution, so it might still be a good upgrade.

What were your temperature measurements in idle and furmark? Do you have a lot of airflow, or a little?

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:42 pm

There's intresting card from Sapphire: HD 4650 with GDDR 3 memories. Roughly 1/3 cheaper in here than generic HD 4670...

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 6:26 pm

kaotikfunk wrote:Thanks for posting your results on the Sapphire Ultimate. It's too bad it doesn't have working powerplay. Looking at the numbers though, the idle consumption is still similar to my Asus EAH3650 silent. The 4670 can max out game settings at my 1440x900 resolution, so it might still be a good upgrade.

What were your temperature measurements in idle and furmark? Do you have a lot of airflow, or a little?

Idles around 38C. I had never let furmark run for too long before. Just did now and it got up around 94C. I have just a single 120mm fan in the rear exhaust of my mini P180 running around 800rpm. I have it ducted to try to keep the air moving past the CPU and video. I turned it up so that it'll speed up to around 1000rpm under load. That caused it to drop down to about 90C. Still very hot but there was no sign of any problems and I don't expect any normal stuff that I do to push it that hard.

ghettojiggalo · Post by **ghettojiggalo** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 11:19 pm

my fanless HIS 4670 w/ stock isilence heatsink idles about 4-8w lower than my saphire 3870...also for those looking for a reference ati 4670...my brother bought a dell desktop and it came with normal ati branded 4850...so maybe the big systems builders carries them.

kaotikfunk · Post by **kaotikfunk** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:03 pm

BillyBuerger wrote:
kaotikfunk wrote:Thanks for posting your results on the Sapphire Ultimate. It's too bad it doesn't have working powerplay. Looking at the numbers though, the idle consumption is still similar to my Asus EAH3650 silent. The 4670 can max out game settings at my 1440x900 resolution, so it might still be a good upgrade.

What were your temperature measurements in idle and furmark? Do you have a lot of airflow, or a little?
Idles around 38C. I had never let furmark run for too long before. Just did now and it got up around 94C. I have just a single 120mm fan in the rear exhaust of my mini P180 running around 800rpm. I have it ducted to try to keep the air moving past the CPU and video. I turned it up so that it'll speed up to around 1000rpm under load. That caused it to drop down to about 90C. Still very hot but there was no sign of any problems and I don't expect any normal stuff that I do to push it that hard.

Excellent - that's on par with what I get in my system with the Asus EAH3650 passive. I have 1 120mm fan at the back of an NSK3480. I'm in the 30's idle, 90-95C at load, and that's with a passively CPU dumping heat into the case as well. No issues with overheating or visual corruption so far.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 5:21 am

just recieved my passive HIS 4650. In addition, I also installed an HVR-1800 tv tuner. My idle power usage went from 53W to 75W after the two cards were installed. CCC reports the 4650 at 165mhz/500mhz(GPU/RAM) at idle. Does this imply powerplay is working? A jump of 22W was unexpected, since the tuner can't be using much, with all passively cooled parts, maybe ~5W at most.

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:12 am

ryboto wrote:just recieved my passive HIS 4650. In addition, I also installed an HVR-1800 tv tuner. My idle power usage went from 53W to 75W after the two cards were installed. CCC reports the 4650 at 165mhz/500mhz(GPU/RAM) at idle. Does this imply powerplay is working? A jump of 22W was unexpected, since the tuner can't be using much, with all passively cooled parts, maybe ~5W at most.

Assuming 5W for your tuner leaves about 17W for you card. My HD4670 measured 15W so it's not that much more. And mine also clock the memory down to 300Mhz which may shave off another watt or so. So your numbers sound about right. And yes, powerplay is working.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:24 am

BillyBuerger wrote:
Assuming 5W for your tuner leaves about 17W for you card. My HD4670 measured 15W so it's not that much more. And mine also clock the memory down to 300Mhz which may shave off another watt or so. So your numbers sound about right. And yes, powerplay is working.

Still seems high compared to reviews for the 4650...my HD3870 idles with the same amount of power, but from what I'd read this should have improved that.

plympton · Post by **plympton** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:51 pm

ryboto wrote:just recieved my passive HIS 4650. In addition, I also installed an HVR-1800 tv tuner. My idle power usage went from 53W to 75W after the two cards were installed. CCC reports the 4650 at 165mhz/500mhz(GPU/RAM) at idle. Does this imply powerplay is working? A jump of 22W was unexpected, since the tuner can't be using much, with all passively cooled parts, maybe ~5W at most.

When I pulled my 2 PCI tuners out of my HTPC (ATSC), I dropped about 20 watts from the system, for what that's worth. They tend to get pretty warm even at idle.

-Dan

jon67 · Post by **jon67** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:42 am

I just ordered an HD4670 as an upgrade for my HTPC (small Lian Li box). The card is the Sapphire version with GDDR4 and AC cooling (large fan), and will be replacing an X850XT-PE with a Zalman VF900 cooler. Any ideas how this upgrade will affect the noise? I've been running the VF900 at 13% fan speed idle, which is virtually noise-free.

For the record, the chassis fans are Nexus 80mm running at about 800 rpm when idling, and at max (1500 rpm) when gaming. I'm not too concerned with noise when I'm gaming, as I use headphones or speakers turned up. The CPU cooler is stock Intel at 40-50% fan speed and the PSU is a 380W Seasonic.

rei · Post by **rei** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 2:41 pm

look 1 page back. renethx owns one and posted their results.

jon67 · Post by **jon67** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:24 pm

Yes, I read his post with great interest. The question implied in my last post was whether I would benefit from moving the VF900 to the new card, but I now understand that the AC cooler won't add much noise to the system.

rei · Post by **rei** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:45 am

HardwareCanucks has a review of the passive one up: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... eview.html

davidh44 · Post by **davidh44** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 5:21 pm

I got an HIS 4670 Turbo IceQ based on reading reviews that it was very quiet. At idle, I find that it's too noisy for a quiet PC. I probably should've gotten the silent version with stock Zalman heatsink.

batka · Post by **batka** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 2:51 pm

kaotikfunk wrote:Thanks for posting your results on the Sapphire Ultimate. It's too bad it doesn't have working powerplay.

So if the Sapphire 4670 Ultimate (passive) doesn't have powerplay implemented, how much could be the idle power?

Knowing this, now which is recommended for HTPC usage and browsing (and definitely not gaming), the Sapphire 4670 Ultimate, or a Sapphire HD 4550 512MB DDR3 PCI-E 1G HM HDMI, which is also passive. However at the description of this latter card at Sapphire, I found this:

ATI PowerPlayâ„¢ technology consists of numerous power saving features. Not all features may be available in all ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card

The 4670 seems to draw a little more power than the 4550, question, does it worth it?

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 9:02 pm

batka wrote:So if the Sapphire 4670 Ultimate (passive) doesn't have powerplay implemented, how much could be the idle power?

It does have powerplay enabled and clocks down to 165MHz core and 250MHz memory. My original point was that like every other retail 4670, it doesn't drop the voltage at all like the reference one that SPCR reviewed. So it doesn't fully utilize power play. It uses just as little power as my HD3450 at idle which is about 15W AC. So maybe 10W DC.

jon67 · Post by **jon67** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 1:56 am

So I have installed the Sapphire GDDR4 version and I must say I am very impressed with the noise levels. Under FAH load the AC cooler runs at 50% (GPU temp 61C) and is less audible than the Nexus 80mm chassis fans at 1000 rpm. The 3D performance is so much better than what I'm used to so I'm very happy with this upgrade.

The Ultimate passive version wouldn't fit in my case (Lian Li V300) anyway so that is not an issue, but it would probaly require more airflow inside the case so the overall noise level would have been higher. The 80mm chassis fans are definitely a weakness when it comes to noise reduction.

batka · Post by **batka** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 8:43 am

BillyBuerger wrote:It does have powerplay enabled and clocks down to 165MHz core and 250MHz memory. My original point was that like every other retail 4670, it doesn't drop the voltage at all like the reference one that SPCR reviewed. So it doesn't fully utilize power play. It uses just as little power as my HD3450 at idle which is about 15W AC. So maybe 10W DC.

Thanks for clearing it up!
The Sapphire 4670 Ultimate looks a wonderful card definitely!

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 8:59 am

So...I can't get DXVA to work with my HD4650, I've tried catalyst drivers 8.11, 8.12, and 9.2. With all of these drivers my HD3870 plays back .mkv's with Media Player Classic Home Cinem with dxva enabled. I've used this guide: http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watchin ... sing-dxva/ to setup my HD3870 in Vista. The only difference is the 4650 is in a Windows XP system.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 12:44 pm

so, no one else uses their 4670/4650 for DXVA(hardware accelerated) video playback of HD content?

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 1:26 pm

No, for me CoreAVC in software is simple enough. I would love for CoreAVC to implement DXVA support though.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 6:06 pm

I wish software was enough, but with every program I've tried, 1080p content skips even with my X2 at 2.5ghz.

rei · Post by **rei** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 9:50 pm

i got dxva working with mpc homecinema and vista on my 4870 after installing some cyberlink powerdvd dll.

i thought dxva didn't work in xp?

rei · Post by **rei** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 10:30 pm

loving the ddr4 4670 with zalman fan.

so much so i have fan set to 60% manually all the time. the fan noise is soft enough i don't mind it.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:04 am

rei wrote:i got dxva working with mpc homecinema and vista on my 4870 after installing some cyberlink powerdvd dll.

i thought dxva didn't work in xp?

It supposedly does, but I can't make my system mimick what others have achieved. I'm trying to us GBPVR in windows xp and use dxva, and some users on the gbpvr forums use XP, and have made it work. I can't even get it to work with mpchc....so I might just upgrade the system to Vista..

incorrect · Post by **incorrect** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:02 am

ryboto wrote:It supposedly does, but I can't make my system mimick what others have achieved. I'm trying to us GBPVR in windows xp and use dxva, and some users on the gbpvr forums use XP, and have made it work. I can't even get it to work with mpchc....so I might just upgrade the system to Vista..

yes it should work fine..

what have you attempted? multiple driver versions, multiple players, a reinstall or two, disabling subtitles, multiple different hd files (some will bork acceleration).. there has to be something different.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:49 am

ryboto wrote:I wish software was enough, but with every program I've tried, 1080p content skips even with my X2 at 2.5ghz.

Strange. My X2 is limited to 2GHz with RMClock and I have no problems with 1080p x264. I use MPC, CoreAVC, Haali Media Splitter, AC3Filter.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:33 pm

incorrect wrote:
ryboto wrote:It supposedly does, but I can't make my system mimick what others have achieved. I'm trying to us GBPVR in windows xp and use dxva, and some users on the gbpvr forums use XP, and have made it work. I can't even get it to work with mpchc....so I might just upgrade the system to Vista..
yes it should work fine..

what have you attempted? multiple driver versions, multiple players, a reinstall or two, disabling subtitles, multiple different hd files (some will bork acceleration).. there has to be something different.

I have tried catalyst drivers 8.11, 8.12, and 9.2. I've got a little program called "dxvachecker"...I think that's the name, anyway, it checks the dxva compatibility of your hardware. with 9.2's on my vista system with an HD3870, I have no issues with dxva, but on the xp machine with the HD4650, none of those drivers make dxva work. I've reinstalled drivers too, cleaned them from the system.

I have only tried using MPCHC, since it's the only free program I've known of that supports so many options, as well as dxva.

As for different video files, I know what you mean, and some of them don't allow dxva to work on my desktop system, either way, I tried a bunch of different files, none of them showed the dxva engaged, but I wouldn't expect it to if the checker didn't detect dxva hardware.

Strange. My X2 is limited to 2GHz with RMClock and I have no problems with 1080p x264. I use MPC, CoreAVC, Haali Media Splitter, AC3Filter.

The only think I don't use is CoreAVC. Otherwise I've got the haali splitter installed, and the ac3filter. Guess I'll try the core codec, see if it makes a difference.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:17 pm

ryboto wrote:I wish software was enough, but with every program I've tried, 1080p content skips even with my X2 at 2.5ghz.

something is deathly wrong with your system buddy.

you only need a 2.0 ghz dual core amd at most with a 3870 card. I had a 4200 939 chip, 2.2ghz dual core and it hardly was utilized, like 15% playing blu ray and or 1080p downloaded content.

I use Total Media Theater by Arcsoft. It really LOVES the 3870 that I have and you have in your "sig". Now, I have a e8400 chip and it hovers around 11% usage during bluray movie. It is all in the software working with the ati hd chip, nothing really else matters in the system. I bet a single core 754 2.0 ghz chip so long as it has the 3870 would play smooth as silk.

Cyberpower and Intervideo SUCK BALLS.

just a tip.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:25 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:
ryboto wrote:I wish software was enough, but with every program I've tried, 1080p content skips even with my X2 at 2.5ghz.
something is deathly wrong with your system buddy.

you only need a 2.0 ghz dual core amd at most with a 3870 card. I had a 4200 939 chip, 2.2ghz dual core and it hardly was utilized, like 15% playing blu ray and or 1080p downloaded content.

I use Total Media Theater by Arcsoft. It really LOVES the 3870 that I have and you have in your "sig". Now, I have a e8400 chip and it hovers around 11% usage during bluray movie. It is all in the software working with the ati hd chip, nothing really else matters in the system. I bet a single core 754 2.0 ghz chip so long as it has the 3870 would play smooth as silk.

Cyberpower and Intervideo SUCK BALLS.

just a tip.

With the 3870 and the X2, I could underclock the X2 to 1ghz, and as long as DXVA was working, CPU usage was incredibly low. Like I said though, DXVA is not available for some reason.