Testbed

Motherboard: DFI DK P45 T2RS (Courtesy of DFI)

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.0GHz

Memory: OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 CL 3-4-4-15 FlexXLC Edition 2x1GB (Courtesy of OCZ)

Graphics card: Club3D HD 4670 512MB (Courtesy of Club3D)
                    Club3D HD 4850 OC Edition (Courtesy of Club3D)
                    MSI HD 4850 (Courtesy of MSI)
                    BFG 9600GT OCX ThermoIntelligence (Courtesy of BFG)
                         

PSU: OCZ EvoStream 720W SLI (Courtesy of OCZ)

Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Courtesy of Seagate)

CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Case fans : Gelid WING 12 UV Blue (Courtesy of Gelid)


Benchmarks

We must remind you that all of the test are done at maximum settings. The HD 4670 will surely give much better results at lower settings and since we are talking about a mainstream card, medium settings make a lot of sense.


Futuremark Tests





In both 3DMark 06 and 3DMark Vantage, the card shows that its higher priced competition is something that you need if you want to have good results in benchmarks. BFG’s 9600GT OCX is a card with high factory overclock and some lower clocked 9600GT cards might not be that much faster than the HD 4670. In any case, the HD 4670 gives a decent score in both Futurmark tests.


Games

The situation is similar in games, as the HD 4670 isn’t made for gaming at high resolutions with filters. It will give you a decent frame rate at lower resolutions, and once AA and AF are turned on, the framerate drops significantly.



At lower settings, and lower resolutions like 1024x768 and 1280x1024, this card gives a playable frame rate in Company of Heroes. Even at maximum settings the card can give you playable framerates if you stick to lower resolutions.




World in Conflict is a very demanding game for graphics cards, and the HD 4670 provides you with a decent framerate if you stick to lower resolutions. As you can see from the results, the framerate drops once the AA and AF are turned on, and even at 26 frames the game has very limited gameplay, but without AA and AF you can get 31 fps at 1280x1024 with maximum settings.



Crysis will be a benchmark game for a long time to come, as it can push the card to its edge once you set quality settings at very high. The HD 4670 can reach 30 fps at 1024x768 without filters, and it proves that it can cope with Crysis. We didn’t even bother to try it with filters, as the score would just be too low. Again, if you lower some settings and make some adjustments you can get a decent frame rate with this card.


Overclocking

We were quite surprised with its overclocking capabilities, as the card easily reached 800MHz for the GPU and 1,050 (2,100MHz) for memory. Overclocking didn't affect the cards temperature, which clearly indicates that its cooler can cope with additional heat which this card produces when overclocked.





The additional 50MHz for the core and 50MHz for memory provides a decent boost to the card’s performance and it can give you an additional couple of FPS in Crysis. The 3DMark Vantage score rose for 309 points to P3674. Thanks to the effective and quiet cooler, you won't have to cope with much more noise as a result of your oveclocking efforts.



Conclusion

Club3D has three versions of the HD 4670 card, one with 1GB of memory, and two with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. The one that we tested works at 1,000MHz for memory while the other version has a lower clock set at 873MHz. The lower clocked one also has a bit different cooler and the memory isn’t cooled.

The Club3D HD 4670 512MB currently sells for €80, which is a bit high considering the fact that you can find a similar clocked card from some other partner as low as €65. But you must note that Club3D’s card has a non-reference cooling solution that does a great job in cooling this card.

Some 9500GT are a bit cheaper but as you could see in our previous reviews, the HD 4670 had no trouble beating that card. The 9600GT on the other hand sells for about the same price, but the one that we tested, BFG 9600GT OCX is factory overclocked and costs at over €100.

The HD 4760 has a decent GPU and it might be a best card for an HTPC, as it has support for HDMI, and can cope with almost anything that you throw at her, even Crysis on low resolutions. The fact that it doesn't need external power, doesn't heat up much and always stays on the quiet side means a lot in HTPCs or living room PCs in smaller chassis.

Once the price drops a bit, this card will be a great catch, but until then we simply can’t recommend it unless you are on a limited budget.