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Overclocking When most people look at a piece of electronics that is passively cooled, usually the last thing they think about is overclocking it. Well, those people are missing out, because where they see roadblocks, I see opportunity. While the Ultimate HD is only equipped with a large passive heatsink, all it would take is a couple nice fans to turn the heatsink into a beast of a cooler.
To test the thermal capabilities, we used Furmark to heat up the GPU as much as possible. With the passive heatsink running as designed, the 4670 idled at 33C. After Furmark stabilized at a maximum load temp, the card topped out at 88C. With a couple 120mm fans strapped on each side, the idle temps dropped a few degrees to 26C, but the load temps made a drastic improvement, dropping to 41C. With the fans in place, it's time to begin the overclocking. Using Rivatuner, we were able to push up the clocks to 800MHz on the core, and 2GHz effective on the memory clock. The core clock was better than the results we got with the reference card, but the memory clock was no where near close. In fact, all we got to was what the original components were initially rated for, which makes me wonder if they are undervolted a bit. Here are our benchmark results:
Conclusion The Sapphire HD4670 Ultimate HD video card may very well be the new king of the HTPC. With excellent playback performance, onboard HDMI, and fanless operation, I just don't think you can really ask for anything more. On the other hand, the HD4550 still boasts some interesting advantages, such as the half-height card size and support for older televisions. Both cards are excellent choices so long as the end user is aware of the differences. As for the gaming end of things, yes the HD4670 is a better gaming card than the HD4550, however I don't think it has quite enough oomph to justify selling this as a "gaming" card. The card will suffice for some light casual gaming, but in reality it is far from being the primary purpose of this card. Pros:
Cons:
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