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AMD Radeon HD 4670: the card, signed PowerColor

For this experiment, we recovered a Radeon HD 4670 PowerColor signed. Largely based on the AMD reference design, the card is in PCI-Express and its red PCB has the good taste to acceptable proportions since the card does not exceed 17 centimeters long. Carrying 512 MB of memory GDDR3, the Radeon HD 4670 from PowerColor equip itself with two tabs Crossfire and requires no plug PCI-Express to function properly, a good point (it can not be said for the GeForce 9600 GT by example).

Although PowerColor does that using the reference design AMD for the first map based on the Radeon HD 4670, the manufacturer still made some changes, starting with the presence of radiators on the memory chips while heatpipe AMD has been replaced by a large radiator fins circular center which turns a fan. Only regret, it takes more space than a standard heatpipe and may encroach on the location closest to your PCI-Express 16x. Later frequencies, PowerColor offers a card whose chip operates at 770 MHz, 20 MHz of frequency that recommended by AMD, while memory is clocked at 1 000 MHz.

In terms of connections, the card offers two DVI connectors and a MiniDIN connector for analog video outputs. As for the bundle proposed by PowerColor it is fairly lean puisqu’outre manual and driver CD, found in the box a DVI / HDMI, a DVI / VGA and a converter to MiniDIN composite, not to mention the Crossfire dongle. And that’s about it, PowerColor did not see fit to propose a game with his card. Note that some cards, based on the AMD reference design, offers output DisplayPort connectors.

AMD Radeon HD 4550: two reference designs

To test the Radeon HD 4550, AMD has sent two different cards but sharing the same functionality. The first is a half-height, whose red PCB should accommodate all the boxes even more compact. Interfaced with PCI-Express card onboard 512 MB of video memory, chips by Samsung, and adopted the first model for a system of active cooling. Consisting of a small radiator with a fan also too small to be honest, the card will make noise in operation, too much noise!

Fortunately, AMD has also planned a passive design with a simple radiator … What happiness for our ears, although in this version adopts a map full size PCB. In all cases, the cards themselves to the power granted by the PCI Express bus while in terms of connections, the model offers an active DVI port, a VGA port and a mini-DIN connector for video outputs Analog while the passive model is rich in connectors with a more modern DVI, HDMI port and a DisplayPort connector.

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