Sapphire Intros GDDR4 Memory-Equipped Radeon HD 4670

[btarunr]

The Radeon HD 4670 graphics processor made itself some place in the sub-$100 graphics market. AMD's partners maintained profitability as the production costs of this accelerator remained low. Its opponent, the GeForce 9600 GSO, though available in its price-range makes it difficult for its manufacturers to sell at low price-points owing to it being based on the G92 graphics processor. Eventually, NVIDIA found a way around with releasing the GeForce 9600 GSO+ SKU, where the G94 GPU with reduced shader core count was employed. This made sure NVIDIA's partners brought in aggressive pricing to counter the Radeon HD 4670.

Sapphire on its part, put innovation to the table and attempted to spice-up the specifications sheets using the "GDDR4" moniker. The company released the first Radeon HD 4670 accelerator that uses 512 MB of GDDR4 memory across a 128-bit memory bus. The new graphics card features a shorter than usual PCB. It uses a central aluminum-based GPU cooler, with memory chips being cooled by heatsinks. The GPU is clocked at 750 MHz, with the memory clocked at 2200 MHz, a 200 MHz increment over the reference specs. It provides outputs in the form of a D-Sub, a DVI and a HDMI connector. It is priced as low as 75€.



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[[I.R.A]_FBi]

this is a better alternative to the apollo 256 mb gddr4 model

 

[newtekie1]

How much will the GDDR4 help it?

 

[rizla1]

yeah but kinda pointless , why not just get a gddr3 1 with a 256 bit mb and if needed over clock the ram to 2200.
the gddr4 wont help at all now if itmwas gddr4 3000 mhz now that would help . low quality gddr4 wont help at all , your better off sticking to hq gddr3. i may be wrong though.

 

[ShadowFold]

Hey its a small boost in performance why not

 

[DrPepper]

yeah but kinda pointless , why not just get a gddr3 1 with a 256 bit mb and if needed over clock the ram to 2200.
the gddr4 wont help at all now if itmwas gddr4 3000 mhz now that would help . low quality gddr4 wont help at all , your better off sticking to hq gddr3. i may be wrong though.

a 256bit bus would cost too much to make and would be cheaper to use gddr4 and get the same performance.

 

[newtekie1]

I didn't think GDDR4 gave the same effect as doubling the bus, I thought that was only GDDR5. I thought GDDR4 only allows for higher clock speeds.

 

[DrPepper]

I didn't think GDDR4 gave the same effect as doubling the bus, I thought that was only GDDR5. I thought GDDR4 only allows for higher clock speeds.

Isn't GDDR5 only a faster GDDR4. I thought thats the reason they went with the lower bus on this card.

 

[newtekie1]

I believe GDDR5 is completely different from GDDR4 and GDDR3. GDDR4 is only faster GDDR3.

Edit:

You can see the memory bandwidth comparison between GDD5/4/3 here. The Bandwidth for GDDR4 should be much higher if it was like GDDR5. AFAIK, GDDR5 is the first QDR RAM to be used on graphics cards, which makes me wonder why it is still called GDDR, shouldn't it be GQDR?

 

[DrPepper]

Very interesting Cheers for that I just assumed since it was called gddr5 it was just faster.

 

[rizla1]

the gddr4 in that is the lowest grade gddr4 its like ddr2 557 , and plaese someone dont correct me saying that its faster than ddr557, cause i know that, they should put in gddr 4 2600 or something.

just seen this BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX

* Memory: 1024MB (1GB) GDDR3
* Core Clock: 702MHz (vs. 648MHz standard)
* Shader Clock: 1584MHz (vs. 1476MHz standard)
* Memory Data Rate: 2664MHz (vs. 2484MHz standard)
* Processor Cores: 240
and thats gddr 3

 

[DrPepper]

the gddr4 in that is the lowest grade gddr4 its like ddr2 557 , and plaese someone dont correct me saying that its faster than ddr557, cause i know that, they should put in gddr 4 2600 or something.

I don't think they were trying to get the best performance out of this card, probably trying to make it cheap as possible.

 

[Icewind31]

GDDR4 is runs less power/cooler, that might be another factor, theoretically GDDR4 should provide more bandwidth (given supposedly better clock speeds) however GDDR3 has matured so much (given GDDR4 short lifetime compared to GDDR3), it is able to match or exceed the yields GDDR4 are currently capable of. At the end of the day in costs perspective it's cheaper to use GDDR3, and I would want to assume that they're using GDDR4 to rid of excess inventory. Though if they did have a good batch of GDDR4 I would like to see that put into a 4830/4850 which would give them the nice memory speed boost they need at lower power requirements.

 

[eidairaman1]

GDDR4 is runs less power/cooler, that might be another factor, theoretically GDDR4 should provide more bandwidth (given supposedly better clock speeds) however GDDR3 has matured so much (given GDDR4 short lifetime compared to GDDR3), it is able to match or exceed the yields GDDR4 are currently capable of. At the end of the day in costs perspective it's cheaper to use GDDR3, and I would want to assume that they're using GDDR4 to rid of excess inventory. Though if they did have a good batch of GDDR4 I would like to see that put into a 4830/4850 which would give them the nice memory speed boost they need at lower power requirements.

it is probably cheaper to produce too.

 

[OnBoard]

Big fan, small card, I like it no matter what mem Although it the ever too popular 2 pin fan.

 

[newtekie1]

I don't believe the GDDR4 is cheaper than GDDR3, I believe it is actually slightly more expensive.

The addition of GDDR4 is most likely to allow slightly higher clocks vs. the GDDR3. The extra 100MHz(200 Effective) actually gives about a 10% boost in memory bandwidth. Something the mid-range cards with 128-bit memory buses definitely benefit from.

 

[LittleLizard]

is not the first one, there is one already on newegg from apollo altough only has 256mb

 

[roadie]

I don't believe the GDDR4 is cheaper than GDDR3, I believe it is actually slightly more expensive.

The addition of GDDR4 is most likely to allow slightly higher clocks vs. the GDDR3. The extra 100MHz(200 Effective) actually gives about a 10% boost in memory bandwidth. Something the mid-range cards with 128-bit memory buses definitely benefit from.

The first part is true, but the increased latencies GDDR4 incurs will negate such a small clock speed increase. I think this has got to be a marketing led product (bigger numbers!), over one that will show any real performance increase.

 

[JrRacinFan]

@newtekie

I beleive not only does it allow for higher clock rates but also better latency.

@roadie

That really depends on your point of view. I mean, if you can get the card and get some really really good clocks from it, this may be the ultimate midrange card killer. I know it's spec'ed at 1100(2200 effective) but most GDDR4 can get up to 1300(2600 effective).

 

[rizla1]

the gddr3 on that 285 gtx was oc'ed to 3ghz thats crazy. but yeah it proly a bit better but on a 128 bit bus it will actuially turn out slower than gddr3 with a 256 bit bus

 

[niko084]

a 256bit bus would cost too much to make and would be cheaper to use gddr4 and get the same performance.

Um, it wont even come close to the performance gains it would get from a 256bit bus.
The GDDR4 memory will help fairly minimally, cost/per % may very well be higher than its worth also... Maybe not, kinda depends on the release cost, but honestly if they jack the cost anymore you may as well pickup a 4830...

 

[Hayder_Master]

that's make 4670 more interesting