Seizing the Power

ATi recently released the HD 4670 and HD 4550, two entry-level cards. These single slot cards do not require a separate power connector. It seems that ATI has finally decided to move ahead from the Dual DVI design and has integrated better and future-proof connectors that can be used to get the best output. Both the cards come with a single DVI, HDMI and a Display Port out. Both card support 8 channel audio via HDMI and Display Port. The 4670 is the more impressive of the two. To test these cards, we used an Intel Core 2 Xtreme X6800 processor at
2.93 GHz and an Asus P5Q deluxe motherboard with 2 GB DDR2 667 MHz RAM. Running on a core of 750 MHz, the 4670 performed brilliantly in all our benchmarks. In the3Dmark 2006 it scored an amazing 7783 3D Marks; a very impressive score for an entry-level card. It even outperformed our previous top budget performer, the NVIDIA 9500GT by a huge margin. In gaming benchmarks, the 4670 gave an average 58 fps in Call of Duty 4, 63.3 fps in Company of Heroes, 20 fps in Crysis and a whopping 113.9 fps in UT 3.

ATI Radeon HD 4670 Rs 4,990	Performance Coolness
Pros Price, ports Cons Heating issues Sold by AMD India www.ati.amd.com	Specs PCI Express 2.0, 512MB GDDR3, DirectX 10.1, ShaderModel 4.1, 750 MHz core, 320 shader unit, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort Verdict

Considering these scores, the 4670 is an absolute steal for the price.

Coming to the 4550, it runs on a 600 MHz core processor, and employs passive cooling. Since, this is a budget entry-level card; we tested it out at a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. In 3D Mark 2006, it scored an impressive 3679 marks; higher than what its arch-rival NVIDIA 8500GT scored in our tests. In games, the 4550 scored an average 28 fps in COD4, 32 fps in Company of Heroes, 15 fps in Crysis and 50.8 fps in Unreal Tournament 3.

ATI Radeon HD 4550 Price on Request	Performance Coolness
Pros Ports, performance Cons None Sold by AMD India www.ati.amd.com	Specs PCI Express 2.0, 512 MB GDDR3, DirectX 10.1, ShaderModel 4.1,600 MHz core, DVI,HDMI, DisplayPort Verdict

Heating is an issue with the 4670. In idle state, its temperature was 44 degree celsius which climbed to 80 degrees during gaming. The 4550 on the other hand performs better than the 8500GT and was even at par with the 9500GT. Given the price to performance ratio, there is a high possibility of ATI taking complete control over the entry-level (budget) graphics card market.