I just purchased one of these cards a week ago; mine's by HIS Digital, the IceQ edition. Non-superclocked, which means it's a whole 30mhz slower. Ah well; mine was $86 at NewEgg, $20 cheaper than the IceQ T, and since 3omhz for another $20 wasn't worth it, I coughed up a total of $101 for tax and shipping. I really did get fleeced for these two things, but the price of the card itself was closer to the general MSRP for the 4670 cards, so I'm not
too unhappy.
The Arctic cooler on the card is
fricking amazing. That's coming from a guy who has been
absolutely spoiled by a passive-cooled Gigabyte Silent Pipe II nVidia 7600GT ... for two years. The cooler on my 4670 is as inaudible as the 7600GT was. Can't be heard over the 3 fans I have (all Nexus) turned down to 5V. Not even at full load.
I'm totally blown away by this card. I knew ahead of time that I'd been spoiled for zero noise and great performance by the old Gigabyte card, so I was a little leery of replacing it. But the old card died, and as there's no passively-cooled 4670 on the market, I went with the one that looked to have the best cooler. I wasn't disappointed.
The thing idles a wee bit cooler than the 7600GT; this one's in the mid-40s or less. The 4670 chip itself doesn't run quite as hot as the 4780 or the 4850, and HIS has come up with a very smart cooler that doesn't let the chip run all the way into the red while just idling, unlike the higher-end 4000-series cards.
Anyway, ya'll need to know that this card is fantastic for
any application. No, really. Gaming, HTPC, desktop stuff, you name it. Unless it suddenly dies on me in a few months (inexplicable gremlin infestation, perhaps?), I can't say enough positive things about it.
If you're on the fence about getting one of these, maybe
the review and benchmarks over at TechReport will help. Basically, the 4670 walks all over pretty much everything even close to its class, and for HTPC usage, trounces the best of the best from higher-end cards offered by nVidia. It goes almost without saying that it's got better power draw than anything they offer, too.
Still, if you're looking for 3D gaming performance, and you're willing to spend $40 or more higher than the typical $80 price for the 4670 (on cards with louder coolers), you probably would be better off buying a card from nVidia. But now you're well into the $100s for price points, and the fact that you have to go that far into it to find
something that can beat the 4670 says quite a bit.
