AMD ATI Radeon HD 4890 Review
Verdict
Key Specifications
- Review Price: £234.99
It hardly feels like it but it’s actually been nine months since AMD/ATI released its last single-chip high-end graphics card, the HD 4870. Now that may not be a great length of time in most walks of life but in the computer industry where we quite often see new releases every six months, that’s quite a stretch. Nevertheless, ATI has today launched the HD 4870s successor, the single-chip HD 4890.
Available immediately and, in the case of the XFX card we’re looking at, priced at £229.99, it’s about the same as the HD4870 was at launch and £60 more expensive than the HD4870 1GB is currently. This makes its nearest competitor from nVidia, the GTX 260 and will immediately alert you to the fact this is not a card meant to compete at the bleeding-edge in terms of performance. Still £200 can get you a heck of a lot of bang for your buck so let’s see how the HD 4890 holds up.
The card itself is outwardly very similar to the HD 4870 with the same 9.5in PCB length, identical dual slot cooler design, and same duo of extra power connections on its front edge. The video output configuration is also identical with two dual-link DVI sockets and a multi-format analogue output that natively supports S-Video but also outputs component and composite with the help of dongles. Meanwhile, the top edge of the PCB is home to the usual pair of Crossfire connectors.
Casting an eye over the specification of the actual graphics chip, reveals that the card looks pretty similar internally, as well. The HD 4890 still features 800 stream processors, 40 texture units, and 16 ROPs, communicating across a 256-bit wide interface to1GB of GDDR5 memory. However, this new chip has been completely reworked to enable it to run at higher clock speeds. Specifically, a ring of decoupling capacitors has been added round the whole chip to reduce signal noise and the relative timings of all the components have been tweaked.
The result isn’t particularly dramatic with just a 100MHz (13 per cent) increase of core clock speed but along with faster memory it should result in a noticeable boost in performance. Consequently the transistor count has gone up slightly, from 956 million to 959 million, but the difference is likely to have a negligible impact on production, and thus final board, costs.
ATI has also focussed on making the new card less power hungry when idling. We couldn’t get any specific details as to what measures had been taken to achieve this but ATI quotes that idle power has dropped from 90W on the HD 4870 to 60W on the HD 4890. Unfortunately this isn’t something that’s carried over to the card running at full pelt where the HD 4890 now consumes 190W, up from 160W on the HD 4870.
With so little changes to talk about we might as well get right onto testing.
As mentioned, our review sample is made by XFX but apart from the XFX sticker it is exactly the same as any other HD 4890 so can be considered a reference model.
Unfortunately we didn’t receive a fully boxed retail sample so we can’t vouch for the accessories/extras you get. However, we’ve been informed that retails versions of the card will include a full copy of the Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X arcade flight sim game. Also included in the box will be a CrossFire bridge, a 6-pin to 4-pin power adapter, DVI to VGA and a DVI to HDMI dongles, an HDTV component adapter, and the all important XFX door hanger. All XFX cards are covered by a two year warranty.
Now, I’m sure most of you are aware that today was also the launch date (though very limited stock is available) for nVidia’s new card at this price range, the GeForce GTX 275. Unfortunately, we only received our card this morning so rather than shoehorn the two cards in together for a head to head, we’ve stuck to our schedule and will compare the HD 4890 to existing cards. Then tomorrow we’ll follow up with a full review of the GTX 275 and compare these two very evenly matched cards directly.
As for those existing cards, well there’s such a price gap, both above and below, the HD 4870 and GTX 260 that these are really the only major competition for the new HD 4890 so that’s what we’ve kept our comparisons to.
”’Test System”’
* Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition
* Asus P6T motherboard
* 3 x 1GB Qimonda IMSh2GU03A1F1C-10F PC3-8500 DDR3 RAM
* 150GB Western Digital Raptor
* Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
”’Cards Tested”’
* ATI HD 4890
* ATI HD 4870
* nVidia GeForce GTX 260
”’Drivers”’
* ATI HD 4890 – Beta Driver
* Other ATI cards – Catalyst 9.2
* nVidia cards – 182.08
”’Games Tested”’
* Crysis
* Race Driver: GRID
* Call of Duty 4
* Counter-Strike: Source
While it hasn’t been a huge commercial success and its gameplay is far from revolutionary, the graphical fidelity of Crysis is still second to none and as such it’s still the ultimate test for a graphics card.
With masses of dynamic foliage, rolling mountain ranges, bright blue seas, and big explosions, this game has all the eye-candy you could wish for and then some.
We test using the 64-bit version of the game patched to version 1.1 and running in DirectX 10 mode. We use a custom timedemo that’s taken from the first moments at the start of the game, wandering around the beach. Surprisingly, considering its claustrophobic setting and graphically rich environment, we find that any frame rate above 30fps is about sufficient to play this game. All in-game settings are set to high for our test runs and we test with both 0xAA and 2xAA.
In line with its 13 per cent core clock speed increase, the HD 4890 shows a similar increase in performance in Crysis, opening up a comfortable lead over both the HD 4870 and GTX 260 throughout our testing. It’s early days but this is certainly a good start for the HD 4890.
Call of Duty 4 has to be one of our favourite games of 2007.
It brought the Call of Duty brand bang up to date and proved that first person shooters didn’t need to have the best graphics, or the longest game time. It was just eight hours of pure adrenaline rush that constantly kept you on edge.
We test using the 64-bit version of the game patched to version 1.4. FRAPS is used to record frame rates while we manually walk through a short section of the second level of the game. We find a frame rate of 30fps is quite sufficient because, although the atmosphere is intense, the gameplay is less so – it doesn’t hang on quick reactions and high-speed movement. All in-game settings are set to their maximum and we test with 0xAA and 4xAA.
The trend continues in this game with the HD 4890 proving to be by far the pick of the bunch.
What can we say about Counter-Strike: Source that hasn’t already been said before? It is quite simply the benchmark for team-based online shooters and, five years after its release, it’s still one of the most popular games in its genre.
It focuses on small environments and incredibly intensive small-scale battles with one-shot kills the order of the day. If you want to test all elements of your first person shooter skills in one go, this is the game to do it.
We test using the 64-bit version of the game using a custom timedemo taken during a game against bots on the cs_militia map. This has a large amount of foliage and is generally one of the most graphically intensive maps available. We find a frame rate of at least 60fps is required for serious gaming as this game relies massively on quick, accurate reactions that simply can’t be compromised by dropped frames. All in-game settings are set to their maximum and we test with 0xAA 0xAF, 2xAA 4xAF, and 4xAA 8xAA.
As we’re beginning to see more and more often, Counter-Strike: Source really doesn’t pose a threat to graphics cards of this calibre. There’s simply nothing to choose between the three cards on test.
Race Driver: GRID is the newest game in our testing arsenal and it’s currently one of our favourites too.
Its combination of arcade style thrills and spills with a healthy dose of realism and extras like Flashback makes it a great pick-up-and-go driving game. It’s also visually stunning with beautifully rendered settings, interactive crowds, destructible environments, and stunning lighting. All that and it’s not the most demanding game on hardware, either.
We test using the 64-bit version of the game, patched to version 1.2, and running in DirectX 10 mode. FRAPS is used to record frame rates while we manually complete one circuit of the Okutama Grand Circuit, in a Pro Tuned race on normal difficulty. We find a frame rate of at least 40fps is required to play this game satisfactorily as significant stutters can ruin your timing and precision. We’d also consider 4xAA as a minimum as the aliasing on the straight lines of track, barriers, and car bodies is a constant distraction. All in-game settings are set to their maximum and we test with 0xAA and 4xAA.
Finishing off a clean sweep, the HD 4890 again shows itself to be well and truly the best in class.
So nVidia’s challenge in this price segment really does ride on how the GTX 275 performs when we look at it tomorrow.
”’Power Consumption”’
Despite ATI’s efforts to reduce the idle power consumption of the HD 4890, the real world reduction we’ve observed is not as significant as the expected 30W, indeed it’s just 5W. More to the point, though, nVidia’s GTX 260 holds a significant lead in this regard. It’s a similar, though less dramatic, story when the cards are under load but here the performance advantage of the HD 4890 compensates for the fact it is the most power hungry. All in all, the HD 4890 holds its own with regards to power consumption.
”’Verdict”’
The ATI Radeon HD 4890 actually brings very little in the way of surprises to the table. ATI has gone away and tweaked the design of an existing product, the HD 4870, and optimised it to go a bit faster and consume, relatively speaking, less power. The result is a card that should be the first choice for people looking to spend around £200 to upgrade from either a card in a lower price bracket or from a card that’s a year or more old.
If you already own something like an HD 4870 or GTX 260, then the small performance difference may come as a slight disappointment but I don’t feel this is something that can be cause for serious complaint. If you’ve spent £200 on a graphics card and want to get a significant performance boost nine months later then you should expect to be paying a significant amount more. That said, if you can put off your purchase for another four to six months then that £200 will likely get you a more marked performance improvement.
As for the GTX 275, well looking round the web it looks pretty clear that the GTX 275 performs on a par with the HD 4890 and is priced very similarly, so we’ll definitely have to withhold our definitive judgement until we’ve tested it ourselves. For now, though, what we can say is that you’re unlikely to be disappointed whichever card you choose.
Score in detail
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Value 8
-
Features 7
-
Performance 7
The Cards and The Test
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilsonon April 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST
- Posted in
- GPUs
294 Comments
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294 Comments
IndexNew Drivers From NVIDIA Change The LandscapeThe Cards and The TestThe New $250 Price Point: Radeon HD 4890 vs.
GeForce GTX 275What will an Extra $70 Get You? Radeon HD 4890 vs. Radeon HD 4870 1GB Another Look at the $180 Price Point: 260 core 216 vs. 4870 1GBPutting this PhysX Business to RestThe Widespread Support FallacyPhysX in Sacred 2: There, but not tremendously valuablePhysX in Warmonger: FailThe Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack: Finally, a Major TitleMirror’s Edge: Do we have a winner?CUDA — Oh there’s MoreThe Latest CUDA App: MotionDSP’s vRevealThe Rest of the Performance Charts — Age of Conan PerformanceCall of Duty World at War PerformanceCrysis Warhead PerformanceFallout 3 PerformanceFarCry 2 PerformanceLeft 4 Dead PerformanceRace Driver GRID PerformancePower ConsumptionFinal Words
The Cards and The Test
In the AMD department, we received two cards. One was an overclocked part from HIS and the other was a stock clocked part from ASUS. Guess which one AMD sent us for the review. No, it’s no problem, we’re used to it. This is what happens when we get cards from NVIDIA all the time.
They argue and argue for the inclusion of overclocked numbers in GPU reviews when it’s their GPU we’re looking at. Of course when the tables are turned so are the opinions. We sincerely appreciate ASUS sending us this card and we used it for our tests in this article. The original intent of trying to get a hold of two cards was to run CrossFire numbers, but we only have one GTX 275 and we would prefer to wait until we can compare the two to get into that angle.
The ASUS card also includes a utility called Voltage Tweaker that allows gamers to increase some voltages on their hardware to help improve overclocking. We didn’t have the chance to play with the feature ourselves, but more control is always a nice feature to have.
For the Radeon HD 4890 our hardware specs are pretty simple. Take a 4870 1GB and overclock it. Crank the core up 100 MHz to 850 MHz and the memory clock up 75 MHz to 975 MHz.
That’s the Radeon HD 4890 in a nutshell. However, to reach these clock levels, AMD revised the core by adding decoupling capacitors, new timing algorithms, and altered the ASIC power distribution for enhanced operation. These slight changes increased the transistor count from 956M to 959M. Otherwise, the core features/specifications (texture units, ROPs, z/stencil) remain the same as the HD4850/HD4870 series.
Most vendors will also be selling overclocked variants that run the core at 900 MHz. AMD would like to treat these overclocked parts like they are a separate entity altogether. But we will continue to treat these parts as enhancements of the stock version whether they come from NVIDIA or AMD. In our eyes, the difference between, say, an XFX GTX 275 and an XFX GTX 275 XXX is XFX’s call; the latter is their part enhancing the stock version. We aren’t going to look at the XFX 4890 and the XFX 4890 XXX any differently. In doing reviews of vendor’s cards, we’ll consider overclocked performance closely, but for a GPU launch, we will be focusing on the baseline version of the card.
On the NVIDIA side, we received a reference version of the GTX 275. It looks similar to the design of the other GT200 based hardware.
Under the hood here is the same setup as half of a GTX 295 but with higher clock speeds. That means that the GTX 275 has the memory amount and bandwidth of the GTX 260 (448-bit wide bus), but the shader count of the GTX 280 (240 SPs). On top of that, the GTX 275 posts clock speeds closer to the GTX 285 than the GTX 280. Core clock is up 31 MHz from a GTX 280 to 633 MHz, shader clock is up 108 MHz to 1404 MHz, and memory clock is also up 108 MHz to 2322. Which means that in shader limited cases we should see performance closer to the GTX 285 and in bandwicth limited cases we’ll still be faster than the GTX 216 because of the clock speed boost across the board.
Rather than just an overclock of a pre-existing card, this is a blending of two configurations combined with an overclock from the two configurations from which it was born.
And sure, it’s also half a GTX 295, and that is convenient for NVIDIA. It’s not just that it’s different, it’s that this setup should have a lot to offer especially in games that aren’t bandwidth limited.
That wraps it up for the cards we’re focusing on today. Here’s our test system, which is the same as for our GTS 250 article except for the addition of a couple drivers.
The Test
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-965 3.2GHz |
| Motherboard | ASUS Rampage II Extreme X58 |
| Video Cards | ATI Radeon HD 4890 ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4850 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 core 216 |
| Video Drivers | Catalyst 8. 12 hotfix, 9.4 Beta for HD 4890ForceWare 185.65 |
| Hard Drive | Intel X25-M 80GB SSD |
| RAM | 6 x 1GB DDR3-1066 7-7-7-20 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1 |
| PSU | PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1200W |
New Drivers From NVIDIA Change The Landscape
The New $250 Price Point: Radeon HD 4890 vs. GeForce GTX 275
IndexNew Drivers From NVIDIA Change The LandscapeThe Cards and The TestThe New $250 Price Point: Radeon HD 4890 vs. GeForce GTX 275What will an Extra $70 Get You? Radeon HD 4890 vs. Radeon HD 4870 1GB Another Look at the $180 Price Point: 260 core 216 vs.
4870 1GBPutting this PhysX Business to RestThe Widespread Support FallacyPhysX in Sacred 2: There, but not tremendously valuablePhysX in Warmonger: FailThe Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack: Finally, a Major TitleMirror’s Edge: Do we have a winner?CUDA — Oh there’s MoreThe Latest CUDA App: MotionDSP’s vRevealThe Rest of the Performance Charts — Age of Conan PerformanceCall of Duty World at War PerformanceCrysis Warhead PerformanceFallout 3 PerformanceFarCry 2 PerformanceLeft 4 Dead PerformanceRace Driver GRID PerformancePower ConsumptionFinal Words
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Radeon HD 4890 [in 1 benchmark]
Description
ATI started Radeon HD 4890 sales on April 2, 2009 at a suggested price of $249. This is a desktop video card based on the TeraScale architecture and 55 nm manufacturing process, primarily designed for office use. It has 1 GB of GDDR5 memory at 3.9 GHz, and coupled with a 256-bit interface, this creates a bandwidth of 124.8 Gb / s.
In terms of compatibility, this is a two-slot PCIe 2.
0 x16 card. The length of the reference version is 241 mm. The connection requires two 6-pin additional power cables, and the power consumption is 190 W.
It provides poor performance in tests and games at the level of
3.87%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 003
Information about the type (desktop or laptop) and architecture of the Radeon HD 4890, as well as when sales started and cost at the time.
| Performance ranking | 614 | |||
| Value for money | ||||
| Architecture | TeraScale (2005−2013) | |||
| GPU | RV790 | |||
| Type | 9002 2 Desktop | |||
| Release date | April 2, 2009 (14 years ago) 5
| Exit price |
$249 |
|
|
| Current price | $11. 97 (0x) |
of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB) |
Value for money 9000 5
Performance to price ratio. The higher the better.
Features
Radeon HD 4890’s general performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. They indirectly speak of Radeon HD 4890’s performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Number of stream processors | 800 | of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) | ||
| Core clock | 850 MHz | of 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT) | ||
| Number of transistors | of 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile)) | |||
| Process | 55nm | of 4 (GeForce RTX 4080) DP) | 190 W | out of 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texturing Speed | 34. 00 |
out of 969.9 (h200 SXM5 96 GB) | ||
| Floating point performance | 1,360.0 gflops | of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo) |
Compatibility and dimensions
Information on Radeon HD 4890 compatibility with other computer components. Useful for example when choosing the configuration of a future computer or to upgrade an existing one. For desktop video cards, these are the interface and connection bus (compatibility with the motherboard), the physical dimensions of the video card (compatibility with the motherboard and case), additional power connectors (compatibility with the power supply).
| Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 | |
| Length | 900 22 241 mm | |
| Thickness | 2 slots | |
| Additional connectors power supply | 2x 6-pin |
RAM
Parameters installed on the Radeon HD 4890 memory — type, size, bus, frequency and bandwidth.
For video cards built into the processor that do not have their own memory, a shared part of the RAM is used.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum memory | 900 22 1 GB | of 128 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory bus width | 256 bit | of 8192 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock | 3900 MHz | 900 22 of 22400 (GeForce RTX 4080) |
| Memory Bandwidth | 124.8Gb/s | of 3276 (Aldebaran) |
Video outputs
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 4890. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference video cards, since for laptop ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model.
| Video connectors | 2x DVI, 1x S-Video |
0003
APIs supported by Radeon HD 4890, including their versions.
| DirectX | 10.1 (10_1) | |
| Shader model | ||
| OpenGL | 3.3 | of 4.6 (GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile)) |
| OpenCL | 1.1 | |
| Vulkan | N/A |
benchmarks
These are the results of Radeon HD 4890 rendering performance tests in non-gaming benchmarks. The overall score is set from 0 to 100, where 100 corresponds to the fastest video card at the moment.
Overall benchmark performance
This is our overall performance rating. We regularly improve our algorithms, but if you find any inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in the comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
ATI HD 4890
3.87
Passmark
This is a very common benchmark included in the Passmark PerformanceTest package.
He gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation by running four separate tests for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the latter is done in 4K resolution if possible), and a few more tests using DirectCompute.
Benchmark coverage: 25%
ATI HD 4890
1512
Radeon HD 4890 in games
FPS in popular games on the Radeon HD 4890, as well as compliance with system requirements. Remember that the official requirements of the developers do not always match the data of real tests.
Relative performance
Radeon HD 4890 overall performance compared to its nearest desktop competitor.
AMD Radeon R9 M275X
101.55
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
101.29
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
100.26
ATI Radeon HD 4890
100
NVIDIA GeForce GT 740
98.
71
AMD Radeon 550X
96.9
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 OEM
94.32
Competitor from NVIDIA
We believe that the nearest equivalent to Radeon HD 4890 from NVIDIA is GeForce GTX 285, which is approximately equal in speed and higher by 1 position in our rating.
GeForce GTX 285
Compare
Here are some of NVIDIA’s closest competitors to the Radeon HD 4890:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB
110.08
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
101.29
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
100.26
ATI Radeon HD 4890
100
NVIDIA GeForce GT 740
98.71
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 OEM
94.32
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
93.
8
Other video cards
Here we recommend several video cards that are more or less similar in performance to the reviewed one.
GeForce GTX 285
27 Compare
Radeon HD 4870
Compare
firestream
9270
GeForce GTS 450 Rev. 2
Compare
Radeon HD 7750
Compare
Recommended Processors
Based on our statistics, these processors are most commonly used with the Radeon HD 4890.
Core 2
Quad Q8400
2.9%
Phenom II
X4 925
2.9%
Core 2
Quad Q9550
2.5%
Core i5
750
2.2%
Core i7
860
2.2%
Core i3
2100
2.