More ATI 4890 benchmarks
SOON AFTER POSTING our story about a "mysterious" (or not so mysterious) ATI 4890 Card having its benchmarks flashed over at the Novatech forum, an irate reader commented: "It's a PR stunt. The screen shots are the same as the ones on the overclockers.co.uk site. There [sic] rigged. I doubt he even has one of the 'mystery' cards".
Well, thank you, irate reader. But you are, in fact, wrong. How do we know this? Well, for a start, because Gibbo is actually from Overclockers in the first place and, second of all, because Overclockers were actually the ones to copy Novatech as soon as Gibbo posted his results. Oh, but on a different system, just to jazz it all up a bit. And apparently there's a funny story behind it all, we've just not been made privvy to it.
Anyway, AMD, none too impressed with Overclockers for breaking its NDA, made the site pull its benchmarks, but not before we managed to grab a few screenshots for you, adored readers.
Overclockers used a soon-to-be-released Intel 9** Extreme CPU, a Gigabyte EX58 Extreme Intel X58 motherboard, OCZ Blade Series 6GB (3 X 2GB) DDR3 PC3-16000 triple channel memory, 4x Intel X25-E Extreme 32GB 2.5" SATA-II SSDs, Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit with the latest drivers, an Akasa AK-967 Nero Direct Contact Heatpipe CPU cooler and a Corsair HX 1000W ATX modular SLI-compliant power supply.
INQaholic, Gavin Telford, tells us he was able to buy his 4890 in the UK already from Yoyotech in London's Windmill Street for £242.
"It runs like a dream," noted Telford, adding, "A very loud dream... think stock ATI cooler, jumbo jet noise kinda thing."
Apparently the card performs almost as well as Crossfired 4850's, runs quite cool (50°C at full load), but is a little bit of a screamer if run at over 50 per cent.
Telford told the INQ that he noticed his new purchase was actually not running at default clocks according to Catalyst Control Centre, despite not touching Overdrive.
"It's defaulted to 4850 GPU and Memory clocks, i.e. 625MHz GPU and 993MHz memory," he said, adding he was unsure whether it was a driver issue or not. "Catalyst 9.3 drivers from the AMD website didn't work, so I used the supplied drivers," Telford explained.
Whether or not the 4890 is a good buy for its price is still uncertain, but it would appear the 4870 will push down the prices of the 4870 and 4850 a notch, enabling punters to buy at least one, if not two 4870's and overclock them to 4890 speeds.
But we could be wrong! µ
See also
ATI's 4890 "mysteriously" tips up in forum benchmarking
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890 gAME cARD, o.k. 890 is also K8890 from VIA chipset & RD890 SD890 from AMD. AMD Has SB/NB 8XX AM3 & Still Waiting for Late Summer, Its just Half Notch Up from earlier 790 thru880. In Above Feel SSD May Have Stiled Your TestBed, Due To Poor Compatibility of SSD W/ Mainboard Controllers, ?Why NOT Stick 1 dual channel lanes of Memory to SSD Use(lEAVES 2 CHANNELS 4 SLOTS FOR MEMORY RIGHT NOW?),MAYBE TWO OR MORE ssd UNITS. One on each lane of channel, Don't Understand WHY not, at least it'd be 1 Volt World & Very "C". New ?9999?, hehe, Series, Got Devil Out. TS Drashek
Seems to me, what started out as something exclusive for the novatech forum readers ended up in a childish pissing contest between the two e-tailers.
I've bought from Novatech for a long time now, and it's very much out of character, OCUK however, I fully expect this kind of behaviour!
Sigh...
"Whether or not the 4890 is a good buy for its price is still uncertain". So you think the price is carved in stone? AMD is providing at least the same price/performance ratio as nvidia. Why should this be any different?
"Well, thank you, irate reader. But you are, in fact, wrong. How do we know this? Well, for a start, because Gibbo is actually from Overclockers in the first place and, second of all, because Overclockers were actually the ones to copy Novatech as soon as Gibbo posted his results. Oh, but on a different system, just to jazz it all up a bit. And apparently there's a funny story behind it all, we've just not been made privvy to it."
Gibbo is reported to have been disgruntled with regards his position and a cut in his salary when at Overclockers and as a result moved on to Novatech around the beginning of the year.
The above likely explains the "childish pissing contest" between the two e-tailers. :)
"Whether or not the 4890 is a good buy for its price is still uncertain, but it would appear the 4870 will push down the prices of the 4870 and 4850 a notch, enabling punters to buy at least one, if not two 4870's and overclock them to 4890 speeds.
But we could be wrong!"
No offence Sylvie, but I think you are indeed wrong.
First of all, overclocking one 4870 from 750 to 850 MHz is not that easy, let alone two of them. But perhaps more importantly, that would be a 13.33% overclock, inducing a performance bump inferior or equal to 13.33%.
Yet the benchmarks displayed here show that the 4890 seems to be more than 18% faster than the 4870, indicating that slight architectural improvements over RV770 were implemented into RV790.
Now, whether the 4890 is a goog buy for the price sure remains an open question, but overclocking a cheaper 4870 isn't the absolute answer.
This is why I stick to tekheads and scan. OCUK and now unfortunately novatech are like a bunch of kids in the playground.
The whole thing is a pathetic scramble for hits, and attention.
I can understand this on tech sites, but professional etailers? come on guys, grow up, its not cool.
Anyone who trusts "benchmarks" from a store, clearly has their head up their a$$. 3dmark? seriously.
I agree with John. However I WILL be giving Novatech another chance as they've been extremely good to me over the years...
Don't let the side down Novatech!!
OCUK have 2 out of 5 stars from buyer reviews on Google shopping... and it seems they re-sell returned goods that are faulty. Like graphics cards that run too hot for instance.
They wouldn't even refund my money on a CLEARLY faulty card that was less than 7 days old. AVOID.
As always, Drashek leaves us in wonders why people do what they do! I would love a 1 Volt World, with SSDs populating some of my memory channels! If they would only listen to Drashek!!
Does anyone besides sites that have NDA's care about synthetic benchmarks?
I mean besides getting a record score for fun, the only reason this could be up is because they are too wussy too post gaming benchmarks.
Let me try to make sense of Drashek on this one.
VIA is good! AMD has some good stuff this summer, and it's better than current offerings. SSD may have done something wrong due to it doesn't work right with the board. Something about memory, something about voltage and the letter C. Very big number, some random saying.
TS Steve-O
This: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13761044&postcount=234 ?
Eh, kind of funny. You've probably seen that, though.
Looks like they r reviving up to sell them at my favourite forum http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/976705
This is all nice and fun, but when do we actually get the games that fully utilize the hardware to its limits? not some broken ports...
I have not been a fan of ATI for a long time now. Ever since the original Geforce ATI has been pushing crappy hardware that doesn't quite measure up.
I was hoping the merger with AMD would have created something great, but that does not appear to be so.
I think they are getting a bit desperate in their attempts to attract attention. Just my two cents.
Bull Detective
whatthefaq.com
Fanboy-Alert?
You seem to have completely missed out on the Radeon 9700 PRO, huh?
Amazing cards.
Destroyed the Geforce 4 and FX in the long run (Catalyst AI bumped the 9000-series by 30%).
Much the same with the X800 and X1900 that provide better performance in the long run than their counterparts from them green camp.
And then there's Nvidia with their very own same old, renaming cards THRICE within one year, to make it seem like they actually have mid-range parts that are up to the task. Remember, the G92 was once a high-end part, is 18 months old and has powered 10+ cards till today - more to come in the near future.
I will keep my GTX 285 and intel Q9650 Quad core setup for my games.
HD 4890 being sold on eBay now.