HD6670, HD4470 and DX11

[Fallingwater]

Edit: title fail - I meant HD4770.

Due to some dealings with a friend I have the option of choosing one of the two cards in the title as a freebie for my backup gaming box. I've googled, but I haven't come to a definite conclusion over which is faster.

Both have 1GB of RAM, and the 6670 has GDDR5 - it's not one of those knockoff 6670s with DDR3 memory.

I did, however, read more than one post saying that enabling the DX11 renderer in games that support it without also turning on all the additional eye candy DX11 allows improves performance. As the 4770 doesn't support DX11, if this were true it'd be a good reason to prefer the newer card, I think.

Edit: I now have another option - a 8800GTX, 1GB.

What's your opinion?

 

[Phynaz]

What's a 4470?? No such think as far as I know.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I might not rememebr correctly, so take it with a grain of salt.

Its actually not DX11 that ads performance GPU wise. DX11 helps the CPU part by multithreading it. But thats basicly putting the CPU to run the abilities the GPU is missing. We had multithreaded drivers long before DX11.

The real benefit comes from DX10.0 with its reduced execution overhead. Around 20% reduction here.

DX10.1 adds performance improvements in terms of skipping a renderpass with AA.

 

[Red Hawk]

There's no such thing as a Radeon HD 4470, as far as I know. There's the 4670, the 4770, and the 4870, but no such thing as a 4470. The 6670 is better than the 4670 but somewhat inferior to the 4770 and greatly inferior to the 4870. So, which is it, really?

 

[Spjut]

Worth to mention is that AMD has moved all their HD2000-HD4000 cards to legacy. While the HD 6670 can't compare with the high-end HD4000 GPUs, it can still have less issues due to its better driver support.

 

[Fallingwater]

Sorry, my mistake - I meant a HD4770.

Also, a new choice has popped up - an old 8800GTX, 1GB. Heat- and energy-wise it's a monster compared to the other two (though the PSU can take it), but I'm unsure of the performance benefit as it's the oldest design of the three.

 

[Jaydip]

A 6670 for sure

 

[Magic Carpet]

Why not just.. bench them all in the games that are going to matter to you?

 

[Fallingwater]

I don't have access to all three. The one I pick will be mailed to me.

 

[Arkadrel]

The 6670, its faster than the 4770 (I think), and is newer with all the extra goodness that brings.

That said.... 6670 is like a slightly slower nvidia GTS 450 card.

In order of strength:
5770 > 450 > 6670 > 5570 > 430 > 6450 > 520

Theres like a 20-25% increase between each of the >'s.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I don't have access to all three. The one I pick will be mailed to me.

Then, ask for 6670 GDDR5 to be mailed. It's an all-round, much better card to have.

 

[Fallingwater]

Then, ask for 6670 GDDR5 to be mailed. It's an all-round, much better card to have.

Mind sharing the technical motivations? I ask not out of doubt, but mere curiosity.

 

[Arkadrel]

Mind sharing the technical motivations? I ask not out of doubt, but mere curiosity.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk.../Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4770-specifications.aspx

vs

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...670/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6670-overview.aspx/#2



Things that stand out alot:

DirectX 11 vs 10.1
OpenGL 4.1 vs 3.2
Eyefinity vs Not (can use more monitors at once)
UVD 3 vs UVD 2 (more video formats accelerated playback)
AMD HD3D technology vs Nothing (can watch bluray 3D movies, play 3D games, ect)

6670 has:
AMD App Acceleration
-OpenCL 1.1
-DirectCompute 11
-Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling


The other stuff:
the 6670 is faster, uses less power (which normally also means less noise / heat).
It overclocks better too (judgeing from techpowerup reviews of both).
HDMI 1.4a, DisplayPort 1.2

Theres just no real reason to pick a 4770 over a 6670.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk.../Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4770-specifications.aspx

vs

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...670/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6670-overview.aspx/#2



Things that stand out alot:

DirectX 11 vs 10.1
OpenGL 4.1 vs 3.2
Eyefinity vs Not (can use more monitors at once)
UVD 3 vs UVD 2 (more video formats accelerated playback)
AMD HD3D technology vs Nothing (can watch bluray 3D movies, play 3D games, ect)

6670 has:
AMD App Acceleration
-OpenCL 1.1
-DirectCompute 11
-Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling


The other stuff:
the 6670 is faster, uses less power (which normally also means less noise / heat).
It overclocks better too (judgeing from techpowerup reviews of both).
HDMI 1.4a, DisplayPort 1.2

Theres just no real reason to pick a 4770 over a 6670.

Very much so. This is why you should get a 6670

 

[Durvelle27]

the 6670, its faster than the 4770 (i think), and is newer with all the extra goodness that brings.

That said.... 6670 is like a slightly slower nvidia gts 450 card.

In order of strength:
5770 > 450 > 6670 > 5570 > 430 > 6450 > 520

theres like a 20-25% increase between each of the >'s.

4870>6770>5770 > 450 > 6670 > 5570 > 430 > 6450 > 520

 

[Phynaz]

4870>6770>5770 > 450 > 6670 > 5570 > 430 > 6450 > 520

You know that a 6770 and 5770 are the same card, right?

Otherwise known as a re-badge.

 

[RussianSensation]

The other stuff:
the 6670 is faster, uses less power (which normally also means less noise / heat). Theres just no real reason to pick a 4770 over a 6670.

You sure about that? I wouldn't count on it at all.

For starters, once you turn on DX11 in games, it's game over for HD6670. Generally speaking there is a full 1 generation performance hit by going from DX9/DX10/DX10.1 to DX11 games. It's been shown in countless games. For example, if you upgrade from HD4870 to HD5770, you won't see faster performance in most DX11 games since DX11 features are more demanding as a result will generally bring HD5770 below 4870 levels. There are few exceptions but overall DX11 features are not a selling point for slow cards at this level of performance. It's more marketing.

On to the benchmarks:

Here is HD4770 512mb vs. HD5670 and HD4770 beats it.
http://www.techspot.com/review/245-ati-radeon-hd-5570/page4.html

Here is HD5670 vs. HD6670 and 6670 is not much faster:
http://www.techspot.com/review/392-budget-gpu-comparison/page3.html

So overall, performance wise, HD6670 will not be any faster, not just because of DX11 also but because it's generally a slower videocard to begin with. This is even confirmed by these ratings:
http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?p=41174

HD4850 = 59
8800GTX = 53
HD4770 = 51
HD6670 = 47

HD4770 is nearly as fast as an HD4850 with a mild memory overclock since its lacking memory bandwidth (HD4770 vs. 4850 specs). So even if you overclock the 6670, it still won't beat it.

Performance wise, an overclocked 8800 GTX will be the fastest card out of these but it likely consumes a lot more power so I wouldn't go for it. Personally, at this level of performance, I'd probably pick the HD6670 because HD4770 consumes almost 31W in idle vs. 10W for HD6670 and the latter has better UVD and driver support. However, for 3D gaming, HD6670 is not any better than the other 2 alternatives. For all intents and purposes, I'd consider all these cards to be "equally" slow in newer games, giving the edge to 8800GTX in older/less demanding games such as Call of Duty, Far Cry, Company of Heroes, all Blizzard games, etc.