ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Series Sneak Peek

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, February 06, 2009, 02:31 PM EDT

One of the ways AMD tests ATI Mobility Radeon GPUs, without having to design and build numerous mobile reference cards that fit in multiple notebook form factors, is to produce fully-loaded, custom reference cards that'll fit into standard PCI Express x16 slots. The cards won't be used in any actual retail product, but they allow AMD to test all of the various features and functionality, and experiment with clock speeds and voltages to fine tune and balance performance and power consumption.

What you see pictured here is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670, PCI Express-based reference card. We talked about the new mobility Radeon HD 4000 series during CES last month; more details are available here. The card pictured here is equipped with every type of output--Displayport, DVI, VGA, S-Video / HD component, and HDMI--and even has CrossFire connectors for experimenting with multi-GPU configurations.

We've got a couple of 512MB Mobility Radeon HD 4670 and 4570 class reference cards in house at the moment and will be bringing you a sneak peek at approximate performance using a desktop platform in the not too distant future. For now, we thought you'd get a kick out of checking out an experimental design complete with a custom PCB and cooler Enjoy the geek porn.

Tags: AMD, Notebook, ATI, Radeon, graphics, GPU, Mobility

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com