We take a look at the HD4890
ATI HAS FINALLY released the 4890, and it is not a new chip at all, but it is totally different. If those things sound hard to reconcile, ignore the details and think about the take-home message that it is the best bang-for-the-buck out there and overclocks like mad.
Let's start out with what the ATI HD4890 is, and from a software viewpoint, it is exactly the same as the 4870 you know and love. There are zero new features added, zero new shaders, buffers, or anything else, it works exactly like a 4870. The chip is called an RV790 rather than an R770, however, so what happened?
The 790 was totally re-laid out from the ground up. Logically, nothing was changed, to the software, it is the same thing as the 770, some bits can't tell the difference. It is built on the same TSMC 55nm process that served them so well with the R770, but the die size grew a few mm2, from 260 to 26x, ATI wasn't specific.
Why did ATI do this? Simple, the 770 didn't overclock at all. If you were monumentally lucky, and had an insane cooling rig, you could get it up 100MHz, where the 4890 starts, but it took a LOT of work. The 770 yielded at 750MHz all day long, but not much more, regardless of how much juice you fed to it. There was a critical speed path blockage, and it put in a hard limit.
Instead of shrinking the chip to the TSMC 40nm process, a more risky prospect that, given the costs of 40nm wafers, had almost no upside. ATI wisely just did a 'fix' of the R770. That fix is called the RV790.
Is it a new chip? Yes and no, it depends on whether or not you are looking at it physically or logically. The changes that were made basically re-timed some circuits and adding decoupling capacitors along the outside edge. This gives better separation between the voltage and the logic, and allows them to run higher voltages safely.
In the end, you get a screamingly-good overclocker because that is what ATI tried to accomplish. Same drivers, same everything, but some could consider it a completely different part. The cooler is changed, and it is supposed to use a few less watts at idle, and a few more at peak than it's 4870 predecessor.
What are the raw specs? 850MHz core clock, 975 MHz GDDR5 memory, and 1G of RAM standard. TDP goes from 160W on the 512M 4870 to 190W on the 1G 4890. Everything is bumped up a little, and it should be evident in the performance numbers.
As this is being written, we are testing a Powercolor HD4890 on the PC next door. Initial impressions are good, very good. The internal overclocking tool in the drivers supplied with the card -vanilla 9.3s don't see it yet - got the board to 990/1045 stable without even trying to do anything tricky. Performance is very good, and performance per dollar is downright spectacular.
This is the first round of cards, basically all reference designs. There will be factory-blessed OC versions coming, and you should be able to find 1GHz parts off the shelf soon. When the extreme LN2 guys get some, it should re-write most benchmarks.
The end result is a 4870 with the few rough edges that card had sanded off. It is better in every way, and has severe headroom for those who like to play. In a few weeks, you will see what can be done when the non-stock versions hit, from what we have heard, they will be a very good thing. We will have full numbers for you later in the day when testing is finished. µ
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I’ll stick with my 1 year old 4870 512MB until the new HD5xxx release with new set of features and DX11 specifications.
...they could come up with a numbering scheme for the physical chips that wouldn't coincide with the numbering scheme for their IGP (or even non-IGP) chipsets.
Confusion reigns, particularly if you're trying to keep track of *NIX / X.org support (or make comments on the state thereof)...
The performance on the ATIs is ok, and the price is ok. The drivers are a bit variable, and probably are still a negative overall.
The energy price on these is way too high, and you have to worry about long term life on these units, at an incredible TDP of 190W
Graphic cards are now at the stage where any further work seriously has to come allied to a serious drop in energy and TDP figures, because headroom simply does not exists in the current arena, or at least, Nvidia are the only ones who have any left.
yay! this would be the top dog in its segment. well it would, if the GTX 275 didnt exist, wasnt faster and right now, cheaper too. oh. lets hope you do the review on the nvidia card because it would no doubt pain you to point these facts out. lets be honest though, chances of that happening are one in a zillion
Is this the time that those who bought a GTX 285 now have buyers remorse? Sure you can overclock the GTX 285. But to buy a card that is far more less and can overclock that, beating a GTX 285 is down right cool! Remember, the reviews out aren't using Cat 9.4 either. So as drivers mature so should performance, as the 4870 has throughout the year :).
Except that the GTX 275
-currently not available for the most part
-consumes more power then a HD890 according to PC Games Hardware when using RaceDriver: Grid
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,680543/Review-Ati-Radeon-HD-4890-versus-Nvidia-Geforce-GTX-275/Reviews/?page=3
-when a GTX 280 actually uses MSAA instead of CSAA performance plummets! Check out [H] review. Which makes me wonder how many reviews actually used CSAA instead of MSAA?
-loses overall when all control panel optimizations have been disabled. This is through the use of "High Quality" Texture Filtering instead of "Quality" per Xbit's review
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd4890_7.html
I can only hope that one day some brave soul out there does a complete review comparing the IQ difference and performance impact when using MSAA instead of CSAA. [H]'s review IMO was a eye opener when they actually usesd MSAA instead of CSAA in Fear 2!
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYzNiw2LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Lucky for ATI, I've just checked that newegg place yanks are fond of. GTX275 listed, all at $259 but not available to purchase. Cheapest 4890, $249 available to purchase. Isn't the 275 that sneaky card where rebadged 280/285s are sent to reviewers and rebadged 260s to the consumers?
It appears that the 4890 is beating the GTX 285 on many fronts. Here's a clip from a review site: "The Radeon HD 4890 beat an overclocked GTX 285 in the Deep Freeze tests of 3dMark06, and nearly matched it in the Canyon flight tests as well. The HD4890 matched performance again in CoD4 at 1680x1050, and trailed behind the overclocked GTX 285 by only four frames in all of the Crysis tests. In Devil May Cry 4 the HD4890 was a mere two frames behind the ENGTX285 TOP, and beat it in FarCry 2. So considering we used a reference Radeon HD 4890 for testing, and an overclocked TOP edition GTX 285, it looks perfectly reasonable to presume the HD4890 would beat a stock-speed GTX 285 in those tests it matched performance or was close."
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=315&Itemid=72
all very wrong im afraid. try not to cry ati fanbois, but just read the conclusions from these sites. anyone, be my guest! dont take my word for it or selected handpicked quotes! pcperspective, guru3d, driver heaven, hot hardware, hardware canucks, bjorn 3d, legit reviews and overclockers club. guess what they ALL say? thats right, GTX275 outperforms 4890, albeit only slightly. good for the americans, i dont care. 275 is the same price here and faster, andyou can actually buy it. 50 plus in stock novatech. finally power consumption? the 275 uses LESS at idle, more at load. over time, its a wash LOL. dont give me this rubbbish about 4890 being faster, anyone can read the vast majority of reviews and realise its slower. overclocker club quote: The GTX 275 just outperformed the HD 4890 at every turn, with the exception being Crysis Warhead. well check the other reviews i posted! lots.. its the same story. ENJOY :-)
as obnoxious as plasticman's comments are, he is right. those reviews do show the GTX275 is faster than the 4890 and say as much. ATI have better architecture with filtering enabled, they usually take less of a hit. but indeed, even all those reviews show the 275 is still for the most part faster WITH filtering, not least of all at higher resolution too overall. i have seen indepth analysis of image quality between these two architectures and AA modes. its pretty much the same, until you go down to about 10 times magnification, then you could argue a case for ATI blurring texture edges to effect their special filters. either way, its nothing to write home about as some would probably waffle on. if you play games with a magnifying glass glued to your screen, them im sure it may bother you. im with the nvidia on this one. clear win.
you could make an argument for both cards. i ordered the GTX275 from novatech today. physx and the ambient occlusion inside the nvidia drivers looks really coooool and tipped me over the edge. it enhances some games a lot more than a nigh on subjective thing like anti aliasing image quality. check out the ambient occlusion feature here: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx_275/14.htm
Yeah but good. I like Nvidia very much JUST because of the driver support but the ATI card comes in a Tweak Edition variant from Asus and now you can play with the Voltage Tweak Option in a legal manner. Nice! but I just can't help to wonder when is Nvidia or ATI gona have an In die DUAL CORE GPU's.
Good review: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1537&pageID=6654
When will ati realize that people don't want graphics cards that sounds like jet engines? I'd gladly spend extra money for a good stock cooling than always having to wait for a decent (and quieter) 3rd party cooler.
i heard that the GTX275 is supposed to be quiet? im glad as i just bought one today to replace my 4850. 4850 is quite hot and can be noisy. and that matters to me too. i like cooler cards and less noise, power im not too worried about. if the 4890 is hot and noisy like my 4850 was then im glad i got the nvidia
Posting information that does not refute how I rebutted your opinion is not a clear sign that what I posted is wrong. In fact, what you posted is in direct contradiction to what you are trying to claim.
Let me explain. I provided information that says that a HD4890 beats a GTX 280 when using MSAA and not CSAA. Example provided in FEAR 2 from [H]'s review. Also, I provided examples that show that the GTX 275 requires more power then a HD4890 during full load. Not only that, when you disable optimizations in control panel by using HIgh Quality Texture Filtering instead of Quality Texture filtering you clearly see how well the HD4890 performs. So, has what you posted refuted this?
You provided a few names of websites other then what I've posted for posturing purpose only. And you forget, those drivers used are not official monthly drivers. So after reading your responses it's clear that what you believe doesn't carry any weight for me.
to be honest i wasnt claiming what you posted was wrong. i claimed it was irrelevant. which i still maintain it is. the fact you basically narrow it down to a single game here and take the argument over IQ to such a narrow point, then its easily dismissed. for example anyone can say 4890 is faster, because it wins on game X, with x settings. so? thats not the big picture is it? lol as for your power consumptions claims, anyone can read those reviews and see yes, i wasnt arguing the fact that 4890 uses less LOADED. at IDLE, the GTX275 uses less. again. so what you may ask? when playing games, the 4890 will use less power. when sat doing very little, i.e anything but gaming full load, the GTX275 uses less. depends on what you do, game all day every day, or use your pc for other things too doesnt it, like writing messages on this website!!! haha. power consumption yet again, is dependant on user, much like image quality variances are dependant on game, modes, filtering, resolution, even user opinion. subjective. therefore i reject your narrow, shortsighted Image Quality claims
710, 730, 740, and 790 also seem to sport a new instruction - burst (graphics memory to register) read
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-R700-ISA,7418.html
No idea in what type of context the new instruction may help but it would certainly require a new compiler hence new drivers to take advantage of it.
No clue whether any of the DirectX / OpenGL primitives can directly benefit from it, either.
It ok to bringing out the HD4890, but the Catalyst drivers need sorting out first.
In fact it would be better if they started from scratch again.
I have a Gainward HD4870GS 1gb card, & with the 9.3 Catalyst drivers, performance could be a lot better.
Also I feel ripped off as I haven't got H spanning available.
I admit slipped up researching the HD4870 card,I didn't make the mistake twice with my next graphic card, that's why I bought a GTX 260 instead.
with my GTX260 card, & I can game with my two 24" monitors set up as a 3800 x1200 desktop, something ATI can't give me.
If you actually take notice you are replying to me in an attempt to rebut what I've said. So, the 1st few lines of your post contradict that in this regard.
Truth is, I provided examples of why I believe the HD 4890 is the better card. Since you are not able to refute the information I provide (saying it's not relevant doesn't count, LOL) then it's obvious to me that your reply does not have much substance (perhaps grasping for straws with your reasons why).
Yes, those points made earlier are examples. Which is why I said that it would be nice for some brave soul to provide a more indept review as to the MSAA vs CSAA in IQ and performance hit as those examples only touched the surface IMO.
So, in the end your believe that the GTX 275 is faster (even though I read otherwise) become specious for me when information provided doesn't state if CSAA is used or MSAA. And with H's review using Fear 2 in which they had to force 8x MSAA by enabling 8xQ through the control panel. It would only make anyone wonder how many other games needs xQ forced through the control panel in order to get true MSAA quality? Puts things in prospective for me and that's just one example!
Check out xbitlabs and anandtech and you'll see the 4890 blowing the 275 to pieces in just about every test.
Pros: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award
+ Exceeds GTX 285 performance on most games
yawn east look, these comparitive reviews say that the GTX275 is faster. they dont just show it in the scores, they SAY it in the conclusions. to repeat myself: pc perspective, guru3d, hot hardware, hardware canucks, legit review, bjorn 3d, overclockers club and driver heaven. xbit havent compared the cards yet, only reviewed the radeon. anandtech is currently the ONLY major reviewer that give it to the radeon for speed. CHECK THEM! FOR YOURSELF! FACTS, not what you made up. i dont believe the GTX275 is faster, i KNOW it is. EIGHT out of NINE reviews there, hand it firmly to the nvidia. seriously wake up! PMPL. i said why its not relevant. you picked one game, and went on about its IQ. ONE game!!! thats meaningless LOL! these reviews compare apples to apples across how many different games between them all? and overall the nvidia beats down the radeon. its a stone cold fact. refute all that those reviews that say the GTX275 wins. you cant. you could consider things like ambient occlusion, physx on the nvidia side, DX10.1 on the ATI. thats all nice but right now, the nvidia is faster apples to apples. end. of. case closed. period.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/946/1/
This is clear visible difference.
I don't like that my object stolen.
Is there any discount for ATI owners for missing objects ? I don't remember such. I regret that I bought ugly HD4850.
Nvidia is better in all but one little thing. ATI gone open source. But community does not write drivers for MS.
Before switching to HD4850 i was happy on both "Other" an M$ OSes. Now I feel even more cheated then just ugly Linux drivers.
Charlie, do you have something to say to defend your beloved RED Cheaters ?
It's obvious you ran out of steam when you have to repeat what you already said. If you read my response I've already addressed this which you haven't been able to refute. So in the end, from my point of view (since you are directing your response to me) you haven't made any head way.
However, it's apparent that this discussion has run it's course. And, it's obvious we can only agree to disagree (more importantly you haven't made any valid point IMO).
Your full of it.
Read the xbitlabs review and see how hard the 275 gets served. Read anandtech's review and see it again. Then read benchmarkreviews and see it again.
Do you see how those new drivers are messing things up in some games? Nvidia are up to no good with this beta driver when it is failing to bench in crysis and messing up grid.
And to finish it off, not one of the review samples is a palit which btw, is the only 275 available right now.
Did you even read that article you posted or did you just look at the pictures as usual?
Let me read for you, please listen carefully and you might learn something.
"Just to clarify again, both AMD and NVIDIA cards have this issue"
Get it?
When you overclock the HD4890 to 990/1150 (which by most of the reviews is pretty standard with stock cooling) the 4890 will win in most tests compared to an oc'd GTX275.
Anand's review of the HD 4890 vs. GTX 275 contains this little gem:
NVIDIA’s latest attempt was to punish those reviewers who haven’t been sold on the PhysX/CUDA messages by not sending them GeForce GTS 250 cards for review. The plan seemed to backfire thanks to one vigilant Inquirer reporter.
And yes, it links to http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/123/1051123/nvidia-cuts-reviewers-gts250
So, good job Charlie. Keep up the goblin bashing.
i havent made any valid point? hahaha. my points are nailed on my lad. the reviews speak for themselves, thats my point. you speak for....well. nothing useful. yor opinions. i have all these reviews and tests backing me up, you just pulled something out your ass that basically serves little relevance to which card is faster apples to apples. i dealt in facts and numbers, you dealt in assumptions and what ifs. and jamahl - the xbit labs dont even compare the 275 and the 4890 in their tests yet. HELLO? THE 275 ISNT EVEN IN THE TESTS!!!! and whats this, benchmark reviews 4890 tests. oh good. THESE TESTS ALSO DONT COMPARE THE 275!! bleedin hell cant you read? so this spanking by the radeon you talk of doesnt exist you loon. so what are you going by here? just anandtech again? so yet again i say, thats one test favoured for the radeon, and EIGHT for the nvidia. come back when you find another 8 reviews that favour the radeon. have fun :-)
and where do you get that data from? well? i havent seen an OC 4890 yet put up against an OC 275. i have however seen the stock 275 commended for going up against a OC 4890 at legit reviews, and still winning a lot of the tests. my source? quote legit: 'the GeForce GTX 275 was a great card and in the majority of the benchmarks it was faster than the Radeon HD 4890 and the Radeon HD 4890 OC, which is impressive.'
Never seen some amny reviews with so many results.... lots of people respond here that the gtx 275 is a clear win against 4890 based on some reviews, well perhaps check the anandtech review, in there on 1680-1920 resolution 4890 clearly wins 6 out of 7 benches... now who is the fastest card here? this must be a driver issue as usual, yesterday green driver seems to drop performance on the low res by a lot and increase the high res....
I read the reviews from that sites...and I want to tell you something...
You really are a stupid FANBOY.
guru3d, driver heaven, hot hardware, hardware canucks, bjorn 3d are sold to nVIDIA every single review they make.
HOW come in some reviews 9800GT trails 4850 very closely? How come in some reviews 4870 loses badly to 9800GTX+?
STFU and read Anand, XBIT and HardOcp reviews.They are the fairest reviewers.Aspecially ANAND.
You will never see the full potential of the HD4850 HD4870, HD4890 cards, until ATI sort out the Catalyst drivers.
If it mean splitting Catalyst drivers into two seperate drivers, so be it.
One set for any card HD3870 & before, & the other drivers for HD45xx series & upwards.
And bring in H spanning as well for the cards, Nvidia has the feature, can't be that hard to include.
You will never see the full potential of the HD4850 HD4870, HD4890 cards, until ATI sort out the Catalyst drivers.
If it mean splitting Catalyst drivers into two seperate drivers, so be it.
One set for any card HD3870 & before, & the other drivers for HD45xx series & upwards.
And bring in H spanning as well for the cards, Nvidia has the feature, can't be that hard to include.
In Recent AutoBlog interview, Drassu, From AMD Stated Bulldozer Is Bit Far Out, Man. So there might be time to add AM3 stuff for 3 channel 6 slot DDR3, 16X x 4 & Few other add ons for UpComing 890 chipset, be 4980? (4970 is too dweeb) card, if Great White Bloows Steam. Or Transition Card , obvious guess: 4895. Then Bulldozer?Right? TS Drashek
You should read that article again.
It says that the picture under the same setting is different.
And it's enough.
Anyway, i have even more important argument.
My personal experience was much better with nvidia cards. ATI is better only on the paper. I choose the HD4850 to replace the 8800GT 512 which i killed during experiment. And the conclusion is never ATI again.
It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Your opinion is a valid one, but why you feel the need to bark it out every time someone disagrees is beyond me.
You keep repeating same thing (8 out of 9 sites claim 275 is faster) over and over again to the point that i started skipping you posts completely. Your opponents on the other hand posted some new thoughts and links that i took the time to check out. So, your "broken record" approach simply backfired on yourself.
I did some research of my own and found out that Crysis has a file called FSAAProfilesDX10.txt and FSAAProfiles.txt which has a CSAA profile in it. So, if I understood this right you have to use 8xQ in order to get the right kind of AA or MSAA.
http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/14519-ati-struggle-in-crysis.html
I also found information about these control panel optimizations. The explanation at nHancer really says it all. Quality Texture filtering can cause shimmering. High Quality Texture filtering disables all optimizing algorithms that sacrifice image quality to gain speed. They also say that the use of High Quality Texture Filtering is 5% to 20% slower then Quality.
http://www.nhancer.com/?dat=d_optimizations
I almost forgot to add that my control panel's texture filtering defaults to Quality.
[H]OCP has a review out that brings up an interesting defect.
Quote "Overclocking the memory was an interesting process. First, we increased the clock by 100MHz to 1075MHz, and the video card was unstable. So, we lowered it down to 1050MHz, and it was good. On a hunch, we increased it up to 1100MHz, and it was still stable. Then we set it to 1075MHz, and it was unstable again. I then increased it to 1150MHz, and it was stable, so I turned it as high as the Overdrive panel would go, which is 1200MHz, and it was still stable. Curious, we turned it down to 1075MHz again, and the computer crashed and locked up again. Back up again at 1200MHz, it was all roses. It was a strange experience, to be sure.
Thus overall, we landed at 985MHz for the GPU, and 1200MHz (or 4.8GHz) for the memory bus as our fastest stable overclock. This is shown in the Overdrive screenshot below:"
When looking at various reviews on diffent websites I notice they all seem to top out in the same area as he did at first. Would be interesting to see WHO ELSE COULD OVERCLOCK THE MEMORY LIKE THIS.
...everyone knows that nVidia provide "special" hardware and drivers to reviewers to get the results they want. Only off the shop shelf hardware and newly downloaded drivers should be used. That's possibly why there are so many conflicting testing results these days.
I say this as someone who always buys nVidia cards (the reason being better linux driver support.)
Here we go again...
All those insignificant post for NOTHING. Just like puny ants endlessly arguing which piece of grass is taller or greener, while being absolutely oblivious that there ‘’opinions ‘’ has no incidence on the fact I could cut the grass and even burn it down to the roots if I wanted and there is not only NOTHING those stupid ants could ever do about it. It’s after all quite understandable, there are not even aware of anything beyond the scope of their limited existence and reality to begin to appreciate such a fact.
Let’s get to the point; I will make it easy for you all, dear fellow ants... Let’s take 2 identical PC. In the first one, put the 4890 and the 275 in the other PC. Put a fully loaded gun on the table. That’s right, a fucking gun. Now consider this: I will let you play 10 games of your choice on both machines, but you don’t know which one is which. Then ‘’try’’ to correctly differentiate those 10 games with the appropriate manufacturers with the best FPS in each games. The catch? If you are wrong on 1 answer, I’ll take the gun and immediately shoot you in the head. You still want to play my game????
After reading all this pile of redundant and pointless crap. I’m now fully convinced that your’ survival instinct will kick-in way before your commonsense will ever do, hence the gun factor to make you realize how stupid this is. No one in their right mind would play my game, still, pages and pages of sterile and unproductive debate.
Funny how things drastically change when you put everything in greater, larger, more realistic perspective, isn’t it?? You are all being badly manipulated and fell for it like retarded ants. There is no ATI or Nvidia, only market share, money and power, don’t you see it? The same rich people have share in BOTH companies.... They don’t give a shit about meaningless concept like red and green. Only ants would do that. . .
The bottom line is that you are **all** way too busy arguing about the size of your respective penises to even grasp how fundamentally screwed your ‘’interpretation’’ of the situation really is. Just put on more Vaseline, so BOTH red and green can have their way with your sorry asses. What else could you ask for? More rape, please?
Having to explain all this in such details.... I’m really starting to lose faith in humankind.
Ramon
However you seem to be the only person on the planet who doesn't realise that both Nvidia and ATI are shitting cash like it's a bad curry.
All those mega rich people in control of both companies? Don't you think they could maybe lend a few bob of their spare cash to get both out of the neck-high shit and maybe even put up some semblance of a challenge against intel?
Or wait let me guess...intel are the *real* players in some huge multi-threaded power game by the same hidden people, and it's all just designed to make us buy more chips regardless, right?