- Monday, 30 November 2009
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The processor is the brain of a computer - Chris Long, IT journalist
ATI's 4890 "mysteriously" tips up in forum benchmarking
WE RECENTLY DISCOVERED an interesting thread over at the Novatech forums concerning a "mysterious card" with some impressive benchmarks and exciting overclocking capabilities.
Gibbo, a Novatech forum admin, posted that he had been playing around with the card, and for good measure, and your esteemed viewing pleasure, decided to post a few benchmark results from it.
Gibbo notes his system specs are nothing special, with his Intel Kentsfield Quad Core at 3.20GHz, Abit IP35 Pro Mainboard, 3GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory, 4x Samsung SSD 32GB SLC, and Windows 7 64-Bit BETA (with Catalyst 9.3 Drivers) and Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit (with supplied Drivers). No Core I7 processor, no DDR3 memory or crazy overclock, so, he warns, if you think the benchmarks don't look that great, bear the system specs in mind.
The first benchmark, from a 4870 512MB and "mysterious card" (at 750MHz / 3600MHz -Windows 7 - Catalyst 9.3), give the following 3DMark06 results:
For 3DMark Vantage, Gibbo got the following:
When the mystery card was run at stock speeds (Windows Vista 64-Bit - Supplied Drivers), the following results from 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage were attained:
Noting "my god does it overclock well", Gibbo then proceeded to post benchmarks from the mystery card at overclocked speeds:
And then again at overclocked speeds with a few tweaks and a bit of CPU overclocking to boot (CPU overclocked to 3.5GHz via increasing FSB to 438MHz):
Gibbo states the obvious when he notes the card seems to greatly benefit from being overclocked, stating "infact when overclocked this card is approx 30 per cent faster that a 4870 512mb graphics card, which is quite an accomplishment." Indeed.
The card's cooling performance is apparently also pretty impressive and noise levels are purportedly "very good".
Novatech holds "plenty of stock of this new mysterious card ready for launch".
We're really not sure what this "mystery" lark is all about! It seems fairly clear to us that with ATI bringing forward the release date of its 4890 from April 9th to April 2nd, there must be plenty of stocks available. It's also already on sale in Taiwan and Hong Kong for around HK$2,280. UK retail price is expected to be around £230.
It's hardly going to be the GTX275 (Nvidia's cut-in-half and rebranded 295) which was aimed for release on April 6th but has now been pushed back until at least April 14th, we hear. µ
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If ATI releases this card with a decent price. This will spark another round of price cuts affecting top tier cards.
its a pr stunt. the screen shots are the same as the ones on the overclockers.co.uk site. there rigged. i doubt he even has one of the "mystery" cards.
PR stunt....c'mon, we all know that you are a Nvidia Fanboi. Just sit back and let it wash over you that ATI is lacing up the gloves for another round. I personally must say that this is for the benefit of all. When was the last time we could get all these choices and performance for such a great price. This is a flashback to the 9700 days... LONG LIVE THE RED TEAM!!!
... you should have browsed to the last page... so you would have spotted this:
http://forum.novatech.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8230
More... much, much more than 'mysterious'! Yum yum
DO U KNOW HOW TO BREAK INTO 3DMARK CODE
ITS REALLY SIMPLE IF YOU HAVE THE KNOW HOW
HAHA... A BLOOMING 2000 POINTS UP
WHY DONT I POST YOU A BETTER MARK ON A SLOWER MACHINE,,, OR WILL I GET SUED
FOR TAMPERING
HAHA
Those reading zio's comment should remember he is unable to tell the time or maybe read, who knows, this article was posted BEFORE the last post on the forum with pictures of the card.
The non overclocking difference between the 4870 and 4890 is pathetic, however. Not enough to warrant an upgrade or higher cost!
Okay, ATI have improved greatly and i applaud them for it. But lets not forget, this needs to be competitively priced. In terms of bandwith (read preview available) it doesnt beat the GTX285 (which also overclocks well). This should stick in at the low £200 mark for maximum effect on NVidia's pricing strategy. If it's power efficient and has a stock cooler as good as NV's then we have a great battle on our hands. I think though that the heirarchy will be -GTX295, HD4870x2, GTX285 or HD4850x2, HD4890 or GTX280, GTX260(216), HD4870(1Gb), HD 4870 (512Mb) or GTX260(192), HD4850... And thats metadata based on umpteen reviews.
I have 2GB of DDR2 at stock speeds, a dual-core processor at *stock* speeds (no crazy +1GHz OC), and a single nvidia card that is cheaper than that ATI IF it were to actually come out....
And I have better 3dmark scores ('06 AND vantage).
Where's Charlie with his "logic"?
How come he didn't "help" with this thread?
I thought nvidia was supposed to be the "never-able-to-be-better-than-ATI-devil"?
If you look at ATI's current product offering, nothing suggests that they realy need another 48xx series card right now.
The 4830 is already priced as low as I think it can reasonably be sold,
The 4850 is your best low power option on the market, if you system only can handle a single six pin PCIE peripheral, thats a good place to land.
The 4870 has fallen in price, and performs realy well stock, and even better with a custom cooling solution and overclocked, I has a stock overclocked Dark Knight from Asus, its an amazing card, runs everything full detail in 1440X900.
The 4870 X2 will run everything on the largest monitors full out.
So why the 4890? I think it suggests we are some time away from the 5xxx next generation cards. I would bet you wont see them until shortly before the Windows 7 release, which makes some sense, Beyond Crysis there realy is nothing that pushes these monster cards too hard anyway.
Its not to say the 4890 wont be an exciting product, I am sure it will be, I am just saying, if your currently running a 4870, no need to run out and buy a new card, and if you were entertaining it, better off to save some money, buy another 4870 and just crossfire it if you realy had the urge (or a 4830or4850 if you are in that boat now)
Graphics company's only do this incremental type of product when they know they have to milk the line a few months longer before they can launch the realy new and exciting stuff.
Id say we are a way off from the 5xxx cards, which is fine by me, my 4870 is a monster gaming card, I can wait a while longer.
"and a single nvidia card that is cheaper than that ATI IF it were to actually come out...."
Apart from being poorly worded and in total disregard for grammar, don't you fret. The card IS comming out, there is no question there. You're a nub if you think synthetic benchmarks are the best gauge on performance. A smart consumer looks first for a card that will provide what they need, then for best price/performance ratio, then stupid bragging rights about 3d mark scores. My guess is you have a 9600GT or something. Have fun playing Halo 1 and solitaire. The PhysX in solitare are sweeeeeeet.
@Cliff
I totally agree with your statement that we are months away from 5xxx cards. From what I can gather, the best reason I can come up with as to why they even need this 4890 card is that it's a buffer for sales at the moment. R700 architecture was and still is extremely successful for ATI, so releasing a higher-binned card based on the same winning formula has built in advertising at no extra cost. The extra R&D costs don't make much sense, but whatever, we still end up with the 4890.
FYI, Gibbo @ Novatech used to be Gibbo @ Overclockers, so it doesn't come as a great shock that they are sharing photos... Hope his new bosses don't mind though!
http://en.expreview.com/2009/03/26/amd-accelerates-radeon-hd-4890-launch.html
Steve is spot on.
However, @hardcore street, what are you on? - the benchmarks are completely different!! The only similarity is that they both used the same benchmarking program to produce the results...
What's more looking at posting dates, overclockers came way after novatech!
We already have the 4890 1gb gddr5 for sale in Holland : http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/236698/sapphire-hd-4890-1gb-gddr5-pci-e.html
It's pre order, but shh.....
I wonder how much juice it uses? The 4870 is more than enough at 1920x1200, and no use at 2560x1280,(well, medium settings are gay) so I don't need a 25% faster card, but how much power van you save?
F.ex if you clock it to 750MHz, how much can you save in watts and noise? Interesting indeed.
And I think we can say that the shaders are optimised.
Correcting grammar while at the inq?
Fail.
How far does charlie have his toungue up YOUR asshole?
Is it wet?
LOL
hmmmm, for less money i can overclock a 260 216 and get similiar if not better results? where's the excitement?
ostar, it is not easy looking like complete idiot, but you accomplished the task really well. congrads on your failure and useless post.
to the topic. a new card is out but it is not really groundbreaking. and even if it did have considerable (50-100%) improvement, everything we have at the moment, both green and red, copes with existing loads extremely well.
i think the focus here is completely lost as all this performance is useless for anything other then games. how about instead of yet again increasing the horse power from 863 to 895, create a way to harness all this computing power for something actually usefull?
@ Dave: Really? You can buy a card and "overclock" it so that it performs like a more expensive/faster one?
OMG! Why hasn't anyone done this before?? It's like getting performance for free!! You're a genius, can you post a howto for us?
@ Others: Just because the 4890 has come out, you don't HAVE to buy one if you already own a 4870 or similar. Why would you buy a GTX285 if you have a GTX280? Why is it a crime that AMD is releasing a faster binned card?
@ Everyone: Just because TheInq has a comments section, doesn't mean that you HAVE to voice your poorly thought-out arguments or vent your bias.
Thanks Silvie and ATI. Thanks Bob for telling me I don't have to buy the thing and for venting your bias. Thanks Tank for telling me all "we" have is enough and that useful things should be done. Thanks Ostar for your imagination. Thanks Inquirer for the comments section. Thank God for all his genius. Cheers
4890 Benchmarks here:
http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/forum/
forum_posts.asp?TID=3786
Given the data we have the previously posted data form overclockers right.
hahahaha this turned out fantastically.
@TAnk
If you have an ATI card, there is a video converter for you to download and try out from the driver site. Although there isn't a whole lot besides that, there's a lot more work going into finding applications to use the pure power of the GPU for more than just games. It'll take some time and may not be overly convenient, but be patient and we'll see some more great apps like F@H.