ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 Mac Edition

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 Mac Edition is a 55 nm TeraScale-based mobile GPU built by AMD, featuring the M96 chip with 514 million transistors on a 146 mm² die. It is positioned as an end-of-life product, released in September 2009, and its benchmark percentile places it at the 50th mark among all GPUs, indicating a strictly mid-pack standing. The data shows a card designed for a specific era, with its capabilities anchored in the DirectX 10.1 generation and a modest memory configuration that defines its performance envelope.

Memory Subsystem

The card is equipped with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory on a 128-bit bus, running at 790 MHz, which yields an effective data rate of 1580 Mbps and a total bandwidth of 25.28 GB/s. This is a small memory pool by any modern standard, and it directly impacts how the card handles high-resolution workloads. At lower resolutions, such as 720p or 1080p in less demanding titles, the 256 MB frame buffer can suffice for older games, but as texture sizes and geometry complexity grow, the capacity becomes a hard ceiling—causing stutter or forced texture quality reductions. The 128-bit bus width is a limiting factor for memory throughput; combined with the 25.28 GB/s bandwidth, the card cannot feed the shading units fast enough for high-detail settings beyond 1080p. In practice, this means the Memory Subsystem is the primary bottleneck for any resolution above 1600x900, where the pixel fill rate (5.440 GPixel/s) and texture rate (21.76 GTexel/s) outpace what the memory can supply. For a 2009 mobile part, this configuration was typical, but the data indicates that users should treat this as a 720p-class card with occasional 1080p capability only in very light, older titles.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The Mobility Radeon HD 4670 Mac Edition belongs to the TeraScale architecture, which predates dedicated ray tracing hardware. There are no RT cores and no tensor cores present in the specification, meaning hardware-accelerated ray tracing is entirely absent. The feature set is instead defined by its API support: DirectX 10.1 (10_1) and OpenGL 3.3. DirectX 10.1 adds some incremental improvements over 10.0, such as better shader model 4.1 support and advanced MSAA, but it lacks the tessellation and compute shader features introduced later in DirectX 11. OpenGL 3.3 provides a functional baseline for Linux and macOS environments, but modern titles requiring Vulkan will not run, as the card has no Vulkan support listed. The 320 shading units, 32 texture mapping units, and 8 ROPs are all fixed-function hardware for the TeraScale pipeline, which relies on traditional rasterization. With FP32 performance rated at 435.2 GFLOPS, the card can handle basic post-processing effects, but any modern feature set—ray tracing, variable rate shading, or mesh shaders—is unsupported. Practical advice: this is a legacy part for legacy games; do not expect any contemporary graphics features to function.

Benchmark Performance

The benchmark data for this card is sparse; the average benchmark score is listed as 0, and the nearestRivals array is empty, which complicates direct numerical comparison. However, the percentileVsAllGpus of 50 provides a useful anchor: this card sits exactly at the median of all GPUs ever benchmarked in the database, meaning half of all GPUs are faster and half are slower. This is a surprising placement for a 2009 mobile chip, but it reflects the database's inclusion of many older and integrated parts. Given the lack of rival scores, we must interpret performance through the raw specifications. The FP32 throughput of 435.2 GFLOPS, pixel rate of 5.440 GPixel/s, and texture rate of 21.76 GTexel/s are the only quantitative performance indicators available. These numbers suggest a card that can handle 2008-2010 era games at medium settings in 720p, but the 256 MB memory will cause frequent hitches in any title with large textures. Without rival deltas to cite, the data implies that the card's performance is strictly limited by its memory subsystem rather than its compute throughput—the shading units can process more data than the memory can deliver, a classic imbalance. For a builder today, the benchmark percentile indicates this is not a competitive part, but rather a curiosity for retro builds or diagnostics.

Who Should Consider It

Given the 50th percentile standing and the 256 MB memory limit, this card is only suitable for a narrow audience. Users running legacy operating systems (like early macOS versions or Windows XP) with games from 2008-2010 at 1024x768 or 1366x768 resolutions will find it adequate for medium settings. The 435.2 GFLOPS compute power is sufficient for older pixel shader effects, and the 25.28 GB/s bandwidth handles those lighter workloads without major stalls. Do not consider this card for any modern game, even at minimum settings—the 256 MB frame buffer will cause immediate texture thrashing, and the lack of Vulkan support excludes it from current titles. It could serve as a display adapter for office work or retro emulation, but for gaming, it is strictly a low-resolution, low-detail part. The 35 W TDP and MXM module form factor make it a candidate for repairing or upgrading specific laptops from that era, but only if the system's BIOS supports it. In short, this is a collector's item or a stopgap, not a daily driver.

How It Compares

Since the nearestRivals array is empty, there are no direct competitor comparisons to draw from the data. The only positional metric is the percentileVsAllGpus of 50, which places it in the middle of the entire GPU spectrum. This is an unusual position for a 2009 mobile chip, suggesting the database contains a significant number of less capable integrated or older discrete GPUs. Without rival names or deltaPct values, we cannot say "X% faster than Y" or "30% behind Z." Instead, the comparison must be framed against the card's own generation: as a successor to the M8x series, it offers a newer architecture, but the data does not provide performance deltas. The successor is listed as "Manhattan," but no score exists for that either. In practical terms, the 50th percentile implies that any mid-range GPU from the last decade will outperform it, and even entry-level integrated graphics from the last five years may match or exceed it in memory capacity alone. The card's value is historical, not competitive.

FAQ

Q: Can this GPU run modern games?

A: No. The card lacks Vulkan support, has only DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3, and features 256 MB of memory, making modern titles incompatible or unplayable.

Q: What is the maximum resolution for gaming?

A: Based on the 25.28 GB/s bandwidth and 5.440 GPixel/s pixel rate, 1366x768 is the practical ceiling, with 1920x1080 limited to very old or undemanding titles.

Q: How much memory bandwidth does it have?

A: The card provides 25.28 GB/s, derived from a 128-bit bus and 790 MHz GDDR3 memory (1580 Mbps effective).

Q: Does it support hardware ray tracing?

A: No. The TeraScale architecture has no RT cores or tensor cores; ray tracing is not a feature.

Q: What is the transistor count and die size?

A: It uses 514 million transistors on a 146 mm² die, manufactured on a 55 nm process by TSMC.

Q: Is this card still in production?

A: No. The production status is end-of-life, with a release date of September 15, 2009.