Conclusions

It really shouldn't be too difficult to imagine who Sapphire's Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate is aimed at, and indeed who would be impressed by such a board - If you're looking to build a silent or near-silent system, then this card's passive cooling solution doesn't just fit the bill, but it also does so while maintaining temperatures lower than AMD's reference Radeon HD 4670 cooler.  A great little piece of workmanship, it has to be said.

Of course one of the primary requirements for silence will come from Home Theatre PC builders, and the Radeon HD 4670 is no slouch in this discipline either.  Hardware video acceleration has you covered when playing back everything from a humble DVD through to Blu-Ray movies at 1080p, while the board itself features both dual-link DVI and HDMI outputs (complete with full audio support) to give you a couple of options when hooking it up to an LCD or plasma screen - You are out of luck if you want to connect to a standard TV or using a component output or the like however.

Finally, Sapphire's offering here also has a certain amount to offer the casual gamer - Sure, it can't power the latest games at massive resolutions with all the in-game details cranked up, but many of the games in our testing suite were pretty playable even at 1680x1050 without anti-aliasing, and by turning down the in-game settings you might even be able to hit higher resolutions.

At the risk of sounding like a salesman on QVC, all this can be yours for under £70 in the UK, leaving us with an offering that doesn't pose any risks of breaking the bank either.  If you don't need a silent running graphics board then a standard Radeon HD 4670 will offer up better performance on account of its higher memory clocks, bit if silence is golden to you and you aren't looking to place yourself at the cutting edge of gaming, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate is most certainly worthy of your consideration.

Product information

Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate 512MB

- Vendor web site
- Vendor product information

Recommended retail pricing (at time of going to press):

Scan - £66.61

Many thanks to Sapphire for providing the sample for this review

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