ATi 3670 vs 4670 (How much difference will non-gamers actually notice??)

Heya im planning on buying my XPS 16 within the next 2months.

Ive seen that there ATi 4670 costs £50 more than the 3670,
and as im currently unemployed £50 is alot of money.


I play games on ps2, not laptop anymore though, so wont be needing graphics card for gaming.


But so would the 4670 actually provide any other advantages in like laptop speed when surfing net and having multiple pages open at same time,
or increase speed when watching movies online?? ect



Thanks

 

No difference at all , unless you are a gamer.

Longer battery life with the 3670

 

The SXPS with a 3670 is £779, the SXPS with a 4670 is £799...

If you are unemployed and £50 is a lot of money do you really have sufficient to spend on a laptop? You could spend less and still have a system which would cope with surfing the net and movies...

 

Any evidence?

Notebookcheck got 57 minutes with the HD3670 and ~ 62 minutes with the HD4670 for full load battery life.

 

The 3670 is 30watts and the 4670 is 35watts , 57 verses 62 is still better, you answered your own question.

 

I have to admit that ATI GPU are starting to look more attractive now I`m going through Dell Hell over a failed 8800m in a M1730. Nvidia quality is looking not so hot.

 

i dont every use my laptop with out it plugged in, so battery life isnt an issue for me.

And thanks, saved myself £50 there..

 

I expected more out of the 4670, though it is useful when you have the RGBLED screen. You should be fine with the 3670, if you aren't into gaming much.

 

...while load and ati's official info says 30 watts for the 4670 too: "AMD published a current consumtion of about 28-30 Watt for the HD 4670. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt)"
but we're talking here about non-gaming when gpu is idling most of the time, so in this case it's just all about advanced power-saver options. as i know, 4670 has advanced powerplay than 3670 has, so 4670 could actually consume less than 3670 while idling. and how is better the 3670 with 57 minutes than 4670 with 62 minutes battery life?

 

Coming from my first lappy with a IBM w/ GMA 950 to a HP /geforce go 6150 to to my worst laptop ever studio 1535 (first diiscrete) hd 3450 then first SXPS 16 w/ 3670 then finally now 4670 this card performs amazing in L4D just messing around last night decided to put everything maxed 8x AA 16x AF shadows very high everything else high at 1920x1080 film grain half... running fraps was hitting 40-60 FPS this gpu performs somewhere between the desktop 4650 and 4670

 

my friend and I play a lot of BF2 & BF2142...he also own a SXPS but with 4670, (i have 3670)

he use 1920x1080 + high settings + 4XAA + ~50-55 fps
I use 1920x1080 + high settings + 2XAA + ~40-45 fps

that's the main difference between 3670 and 4670 in BF2142...
i dont see any reason for you to pay £50 extra if you can live with 2XAA instead of 4XAA and a bit less fps, (sort of)


both cards is really good GPUs, good enough for high settings in older games but weak enough for high settings in ex, Crysis...for that you need 256bit Memory-bus and GTX card.

 

Now that's what I call a definitive answer!! Thanks!!

 

How about any differences when playing blue-ray movies at maxed out resolution? Is there any noticeable difference as far as fluidity, any hang-ups?

 

Should be no difference , even a INTEL 4500MHD can play a Blu-Ray flawlessly.

 

There isn't £50 difference, there is £20 in the base models, with the higher specs offering the HD3670 and HD4670 for the same price (base model has 320 GB HDD, the next offer up comes with 500GB and a few bells and whistles for £849 for both the HD3670 and HD4670, so it is a "free" upgrade).

As I said if money is so tight that £50 is a stretch, should the OP have spent £779 on a laptop for browsing and playing movies??

 

Just get the 4670. You wont be able to upgrade that card ever, so try to get the best Imo.

 

I have an SXPS 16 with the 3670 (512mb) with 720p WLED screen. I don't really game at all, and I run online video content and video files fine. I get about 4.5 h battery life with lowest screen brightness (9-cell).

I used to have an HP dv5000 with 128mb on a lower-end ATI Radeon graphics card, I guess, and I recall CS1.6 used to run really smoothly even on that one haha.

 

Does anyone know when did Dell first introduced 3670 into XPS 16? And when 4670?

 

about gaming....

i tried " Mipmap detail level" on high quality, instead of default, (of course i thought it would eat my FPS some 10-15 points or whatever)
it made grass, trees, palmtrees, etc, MUCH better of a cost of 2-3 FPS !

(thats a freaking well optimized GPU-driver).....well done Ati !!!!

Ati.3670. P8700 2.53Ghz: 1920x1080, high settings, ~55 FPS (Mipmap high quality.....just wooaah )

 

The difference would probably be insignificant for the most part.

The only case where I'd expect the Radeon 4670 to make a noticeable improvement over the Radeon 3670 while browsing webpages is if you like to enjoy either multiple instances of either WebGL or several high-resolution Flash movies (though I can't say how well Flash utilizes hardware acceleration) simultaneously. Since neither of these are very likely (atleast at the moment), I wouldn't suggest it if it hurts your budget.

 

well, if it had been a powerful GTX card it had been quite big difference...........
i think both 3670 and 4670 is good GPUs for all type of games. (its not necessary to play new games with 8XAA. it looks great with 2 or 4XAA also)

God what I love BF2 (such a splendid game-engine)

 

You shouldnt compare BF2 for these cards, because my old x700 can run it on 1400x1050, so ofcourse 3670 will run it fine, and there is no space for improvement for 4670. If you want to compare the cards, do it with more graphically demanding games

 

True that, B2 is showing its age, from above it may still look good. But first person shooter wise it is definately old school.

My 8600m Gt could run it at high.