After the official launch of the ATI HD4600 serie, the brands HIS and MSI have shown their versions of the midrange card. It's remarkable that both brands have chosen to use their own coolers instead of the single-slot reference model. MSI will release a version of the HD4650 and HD4670 that are quite similar to each other. They use the same PCB and the cooler only has minor differences. It's quite clear however that the HD4650 is intended for a lower segment, the card doesn't have Crossfire connectors and has a DVI and VGA connector instead of 2x DVI.
The HD4670 has 512Mb of GDDR3 memory, clocked at 2000 Mhz, while the HD4650 has GDDR2 memory with a frequency of 1000 MHz. The RV730 chip that the cards are based on are clocked at respectively 750 and 600 MHz for the HD4670 and HD4650. The power consumption of the HD4670 is less than 75 Watt and the HD4650 wouldn't draw more than 60 Watt. According to MSI, the HD4600 serie is as efficient as the HD3600 line of cards, only with three times the power.
HIS has chosen to release two versions of the HD4670, with one of the cards being an overclocked model. Both HIS versions use the dualslot IceQ cooler which blows hot air from the graphics card directly into the case. HIS also uses 512MB GDDR3 memory with a 2000MHz frequency on the cards. The RV730 chip has 320 shaders and runs at 750MHz in the regular IceQ version. The Turbo IceQ, which is the overclocked model, has its core clocked at 780 MHz, an overclock of about 5%.
The HD4600 cards by HIS and MSI support DX10.1, UVD2, PCI-Express 2.0 and can also transmit 7.1 sound using the DVI-to-HDMI convertor. The cards should become available soon at a price that's still unknown.
