ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Series Sneak Peek

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.