HIS H467PS1GP iSilence (Passively-Cooled Radeon HD 4670, 1,024 MB)
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HIS offers a passively-cooled version of the Radeon HD 4670, which allows it to operate in complete silence. The Zalman cooler on the top side of the board is sufficiently slim to make it only a single slot wide, with additional cooling fins projecting from the rear edge. To ferry the heat to the cooling fins, the GPU cooler incorporates three large heat pipes. There’s almost one inch of space from the bottom of the card to the first cooling fin at the rear, which leaves enough room to pop this card onto an Asus P6T motherboard without impinging upon any of its onboard components.
The memory clock on this passively-cooled card is somewhat lower than the reference value, probably to help keep things cool. The reference designs run at 1,000 MHz, which HIS reduces to 850 MHz here. Nevertheless, you’ll also find 1 GB of GDDR3 RAM at your disposal. The other settings match those found on the ATI reference model design: a 750 MHz clock speed for the GPU, DirectX 10.1, and 320 stream processors.
In 2D mode, the card clocks down to 600/700 MHz (GPU/RAM) while the reference design goes quite a bit lower to 165/250 MHz. That’s why this card consumes 9 W more power than a normal Radeon HD 4670 does during desktop use, but it also consumes 2 W less during heavy 3D mode operation "thanks" to its lower memory clock under load.
The passively-cooled Zalman VNF 100 iSilence4 cooler and the Radeon HD 4670 GPU work extremely well together. In 2D mode, the card runs at 41° C, three degrees lower than the reference model. Under a heavy 3D load, temps climb to 70° C, 13 degrees cooler than the actively-cooled reference card. In both cases, the Radeon HD 4670 benefits from airflow from the CPU cooler, which is right next to the cooling fins for the Zalman cooler. Those who can use this card in a case with good air circulation should also enjoy the same low operating temperatures.
When it comes to 3D performance, the reduced memory clock rate lowers overall frame rates by about 10%, or 10.4 frames per second (FPS). Those who game with the graphics quality slider set to high, or with DirectX 10 effects turned on, should probably turn off AA at higher resolutions. Although the card's equipped with 1,024 MB of graphics RAM, this makes that memory somewhat less useful than it might be otherwise. The retail package includes no video cables, but no additional power cable is needed for this card, either. The Radeon HD 4670 gets all the power it needs from the PCI Express (PCIe) bus. A bundled DVI adapter makes HDMI connectivity available, and the card is 7.9"(20 cm) long, including its cooling fins.
