Radeon HD 8670M. Radeon HD 8670M video card

Many buyers believe that paying attention to a discrete video adapter is only necessary when buying or upgrading a personal computer. But the characteristics of the video card installed in the mobile device are somehow overlooked. The problem lies in the fact that the manufacturer advertises laptops in assembly, and not its components separately, so the user does not even think about which graphics accelerator is installed in mobile technology. But in vain, because no one prevents a potential buyer from picking up a laptop with a decent video game card.

The focus of this article is a discrete video adapter for the Radeon HD 8670M notebook. The reader is given the opportunity to learn the characteristics of the video card, as well as to get acquainted with the feedback of users who use a mobile gaming device.

Positioning the chip

It's better to start with the fact that the graphic accelerator for a laptop is completely different from the discrete video adapters that many users are used to seeing on store windows. The product is more like a CPU, both in appearance and in size. In addition, the chip is a non-removable element and reliably soldered into the motherboard.

The Radeon HD 8670M is positioned in the budget segment, although many users claim that the video adapter is able to enter the battle for the championship with the chips of the initial game class, if it is previously dispersed. But, as practice shows, the manufacturer knows best where to position the chip, because the owner of the laptop, in contrast to the owners of the personal computer, is not able to improve the cooling of the crystal and memory modules by installing a more powerful cooler.

Basic performance characteristics

But the configuration of the mobile product almost does not differ from the capabilities of the full-fledged video adapter Radeon HD 8670M. The performance characteristics directly depend on the technologies used, data bus and operating frequencies of the graphics core and memory modules. The chip is built on the Mars architecture and has an operating frequency of 775 MHz graphics accelerator. In Boost mode, the graphics card can accelerate to 825 MHz.

A weak link in the system is memory, which operates using DDR3 technology using a 64-bit bus. The operating frequency of the video memory is 1000 MHz. The video adapter is discrete and uses its own memory modules with a capacity of 2 GB.

Technologies used

The key to success for launching many modern games is the support of DirectX 11.1 instructions. It is clear that the old memory chips and modern technologies are poorly compatible, but in the minimal settings the user will still manage not only to launch, but also to play in his favorite toy. According to the performance of the Radeon HD 8670M chip, the owners' feedback is quite predictable - to work with resource-intensive applications requires processor power and a large amount of RAM.

The only thing you need not worry about high performance is the users whose work is related to multimedia processing. The fact is that the graphics accelerator at the hardware level can encode video. The Radeon HD 8670M supports all existing codecs, and the video card for content processing does not use the CPU.

Interesting symbiosis

Many potential buyers managed to draw attention to the fact that the manufacturer in the description of the device indicates two video cards instead of one. There are no typos here, just laptops often use an integrated adapter and a discrete video accelerator. This bundle can work either individually or together in CrossFire mode.

In their reviews, many owners note an interesting symbiosis - AMD Radeon HD 7620G + 8670M. This solution increases mobile device performance by 30-50%. Yes, the indicator is small, but the difference in resource-intensive games is still noticeable. There are also unsuccessful bundles of video adapters, for example, Intel HD Graphics 4400 + 8670M. There is no question of any CrossFire mode here, accordingly, one can forget about high performance. A feature of such a system is increased energy saving when idle, because the Intel product is less demanding of resources than the integrated AMD chip.

The closest competitor in mobile performance

To make it easier to navigate among Radeon products to potential buyers, we note that the analogue from Nvidia is very interesting, which can show similar results in testing. Compare with a chip Radeon HD 8670M and discrete video card Geforce 840M. Yes, it is the legendary chip that is installed in Macbook Air notebooks. Users can easily analyze and identify with which applications and games the laptop built on the basis of the graphic accelerator 8670M will cope.

Only comparison of the AMD product with the Nvidia chip is made using basic characteristics. The fact is that the Geforce controller splits perfectly both on the graphics core and on the memory modules. This can not boast of Radeon HD 8670M, whose characteristics are limited on the hardware level. Therefore, do not be surprised at some test results that are available in the media.

Gaming Performance

It is clear that many potential buyers figures are less interesting than the list of real games that a discrete video adapter can handle. According to the graphics accelerator Radeon HD 8670M reviews are disappointing. In the context of games that work with instructions DirectX 11.1, it is worth noting that the launch of Battlefield 4, Metro Last Light or BioShock Infinite is quite real. But when it comes to FPS, there are many complaints from users here. At minimum settings, achieving more than 20-25 frames per second is unrealistic even with the Inrel Core i7 processor. That's where overclocking the graphics core would be very useful.

Finally

Inexpensive, but quite productive graphics accelerator Radeon HD 8670M will be interesting for many users who want to have fun away from a personal computer, but count on a full replacement of the home workstation is not worth it. To fans of resource-intensive games, a budget video card will bring only frustration. But for professional work related to the processing of graphics or video, a laptop with a video adapter Radeon HD 8670M is quite suitable.