Disappointed

[ollieplimsoles]

Up to now I have been using a BFG 7950GT 256mb card in my machine which is solely used to run Flight Simulator X with Service Packs and Acceleration pack plus a pile of add-ons.

Things had been going well until my card decided that it didn't want to 'seat' properly in its PCI-e slot any more. When I tried to start up all I got was three 'bleeps' and no picture. Unfortunately the card seems fine in other ways. Anyhow, used this as an excuse to change my card. Didn't want massive layout not least because my power supply is a humble 250W affair and I don't have a lot of room. Opted for a Powercolor HD4670 1Gb as a replacement. Result - what a let down :-(

It gets such good write ups but is definitely markedly inferior to my previous 7950GT even though it is newer and has 4x the memory. At times it seems to struggle even though I have lowered the resolution from my my monitors 1680 x 1050 native. I can only assume that the memory is not as important a performance factor here compared to the 128 vs 256 bit difference? I don't think it is even any way better than the Asus 8600GT Silent I have in another machine.

Should I have purchased something a little heftier or am I missing something here? Any advice on set up etc would be greatly appreciated - otherwise a well priced, barely used 1Gb HD 4670 will be appearing on ebay in the not too distant future. 🙂

Regards,

MarkS.

BTW System is Acer M Series with 4Gb ram, Q6600 quad core @2.7GHz

 

[huron]

Sorry for the disappointment.

Check out this hierarchy to see that the cards are probably pretty similar

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-graphics,2086-7.html

Unfortunately your PSU probably won't handle a whole lot more powerful GPUs.

I would think that the new GPU would be at least as good as your old GPU.

 

[jitpublisher]

Check out the GPU charts here on Toms. Flight Simulator appears to favor nVidia cards, especially if you are looking at decent frame rates of 30+. The 9600GT is a decent priced card that appears to do very well in the benchmarks. The 4670 is pretty weak on these charts, I would suggest sticking to nVidia for your needs with this game.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Microsoft-Flight-Simulator-X-SP2,781.html

 

[protokiller]

The 4670 is on par with the 9600GT which is over twice as fast as the 8600gt.

The 4670 is the better card.

 

[jerrardo]

Based on the GPU charts the both score about 25 fps at that resolution (with 512mb versions of both cards)...

Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2
Fraps/Freeflight
(1680x1050, 0xAA, Bilinear, Ultra Quality)
Score in FPS 4670=24.90 7950gt=25.10

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Microsoft-Flight-Simulator-X-SP2,781.html

With the top cards getting about 5-7 fps higher I wouldn't expect a whole lot of extra fps from a similar card that has more memory. Return it if you can, and then use the chart to pick a better performing card. Make sure you keep an eye on the power requirements as well. There are plenty of posts daily on power supplies, and you can easily find one adequate for your needs under $50.

 

[jitpublisher]

The 4670 is on par with the 9600GT which is over twice as fast as the 8600gt.

The 4670 is the better card.

You apparently are spouting off without looking at the charts. There is a big difference.

 

[protokiller]

I don't look at the toms hardware charts, but at 0ther reviewers.

 

[knotknut]

I don't look at the toms hardware charts, but at 0ther reviewers.

Could you provide links to these reviews.

 

[megamanx00]

Did you uninstall the nVidia Drivers Properly before hand?

If you didn't then you'll have all kinds or performance problems when trying to install ATI drivers on top of them. Since the M series uses onboard video make sure you disabled it and uninstalled it's drivers before installing drivers for the 4670.

It could also be that Catalyst Control Center is hogging to many of your resources. The Acer M series is generally a low end computer so the CCC can considerably degrade performance. You may want to try just installing the drivers. I didn't use CCC on my old Athlon 3000+ with it's 1950GT until version 8.11 since previous versions always got a big performance hit, especially in the 7.x series.

Not enough POWER

While the 4670 uses less power than the 7950GT it doesn't have an external power connector so it has to draw all of it's power from the PCI-E slot. Since it can use up to 75W it's possible that it's not getting what it wants under load from the motherboard and it can't draw power from a secondary connector like the 7950GT can. Honestly I'm surprised your 7950GT worked with that PSU 😀.

 

[einstein4pres]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3405&p=7

This shows 4670 edging out the 9600gso, which is also edged out by the 9600gt.

Tom's charts look rather suspect when it comes to this graph at least.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Microsoft-Flight-Simulator-X-SP2,781.html

4670 beating out 4870x2? I know people talk about FSX being CPU limited, but I don't think it's this CPU limited. Also note that the FPS *improve* when moving to 1920x1200 with AA.

 

[wh3resmycar]

the 9600gt is faster than a 4670. it might come close but the gt is still faster.

 

[Dekasav]

Isn't the HD 4670 with 1Gb of RAM only DDR3, not GDDR3. I think it's slower RAM (900Mhz to 1,000Mhz) and since the HD 4670 is bandwidth bottlenecked, that could be a ~10% decrease in performance compared to the 512Mb HD 4670. I think in the Guru3d review of it, when they OC'd the memory they got a near linear increase in frames.

Definitely check out drivers, uninstall both sets (run driver sweeper), reinstall the ATi drivers, and maybe leave out the CCC. Also, make sure there's nothing wrong with your PCI-e slot. If your old card wouldn't fit in anymore, there's a chance it's physically damaged, which means it could be supplying less power than needed, less bandwidth than normal, or a host of other problems.

The HD 4670 should do better, sounds like user-error to me.

 

[ollieplimsoles]

Thanks to all for your replys.

I was also surprised that the 7950GT worked so well - I bought it from my brother for a nominal sum just to see if it would.

I shall try all the options you have supplied and post on the outcomes.

Many thanks.

MarkS.