Introduction
With the recent announcement and price points of the new 5850 and 5870 series by ATI, I thought it made sense to re visit the current top of the line offering from ATI, the Radeon 4890. We will see some softening of the prices from here and these may become the best bang for the buck GPU's. We are also going to take a look at the crossfire performance and scaling on these cards.
The Radeon 4890 was announced earlier this year and came with a new core, the RV 790. As compared to the 4870's 750 Mhz core clock, the 4890 comes with a default cock of 850 on the core and 975 Mhz on the memory.
Let’s take a look at the specifications:
Asus Radeon 4890
Shader units:
800
ROPs: 16
GPU: RV790
Transistor count: 959M
Memory size: 1024 MB
Memory bus width: 256 bit
Core clock: 850 Mhz
Memory clock: 975 Mhz
[BREAK=Unboxing and the Card]
Unboxing and the Card
I would like to thank Asus for sending across these excellent review samples. So let’s start by taking a look at the box, both front and back.
The outside of the box holds a picture of a knight on a horse, and its a design that Asus seems to like. But the main feature to look out for on the box is the "Voltage Tweak" option, which we will cover in greater detail once testing starts.
Once we open the outer box, we are greeted by a single black box, with an Asus logo on it. This is a very nice touch by Asus and also helps keep the card safe during shipping. This box contains all the CD's, the accessories and the card.
The accessories list is pretty long and has all the bells and whistles that you could have asked for. The card is nicely packaged in styrofoam and covered in an antistatic cover.
Now on to the card.
The card is protected with thick blue plastic shrouds for the crossfire connectors, the PCIe slots and the various connectors at the rear of the card.
The card itself does not look very different from the regular 4890, and Asus have continued with the red PCB that ATI is well known for. The black Knight as usual makes an appearance on top of the cooler. Other than this single sticker, the rest of the GPU is as per the reference PCB.
The rear of the card again has no surprises, with the normal layout.
These cards use the reference design and therefore the power is supplied by two 6 pin PCIe cables.
Finally we take a look at the connectors available on this card.
[BREAK=Test setup and Overclocking]
Test Setup and Overclocking
The test setup this time around, ....actually like all my other reviews is as follows:
Processor: AMD 720BE unlocked to 4 cores @ 3.0 Ghz
Motherboard: MSI GD70 790FX
Ram: OCZ 1600 Mhz Platinum
PSU: OCZ Modxtreme 700W Modular
Let’s start with the over clocking potential on this card. The cards I received were used by a number of reviewers before me, so I am quite sure they are not specially binned. I started by using the ATI overdrive over clocking function and got it to around 925/1150 on the core and memory respectively. I then used the Asus Smart Doctor Utility to up the core voltages a bit to 1.325 and was able to do 960/1150. For some reason the utility would not let me go above 1.325, so I left it at that.
Now that’s a lot of over clock for a GPU, with almost 13% on the core and close to 15.5% on the memory. Now imagine what two of these beasts can do for your gaming setup. With the core set at around 1.4, we can go to around 1000 MHz, but this was not to be. I am sure Asus has limited the range on the software, as the volterra chips used on these cards are capable of going up to the above mentioned 1.4-1.425.
[BREAK=3D Mark 06]
3d Mark 06
We are going to look at a total of three tests for this review. I am not going to use any of the over clocked settings for the tests as that’s not justified for now.
The first out of these is the popular benchmarking software, 3D Mark 06.
So let’s start with 1280x1024, with no AA and no AF.
The 4890 scores a respectable 15,978, which I would venture to say is faster than a stock GTX 260 216, which scored around 800 points less on the same setup.
But my total attention was on getting the scores for the crossfire setup and that blew me away with a score of 19,656.
Let’s now take a look at the same test at 1920 x 1200, as this is the resolution these cards are meant to be used at.
Again the stock card comes back with a reasonable score of 13,139 and a crossfire score of 18,334. This in my reckoning would be faster than a 295GTX on a similar setup.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis
So let’s move on to everyone's favorite gaming benchmark and see how the cards perform.
Again we will start with 1280x1024, with 2xAA.
At a low resolution the game is barely playable on a 4850 with all settings on high. On the 4890 we are at almost 31 FPS on an average and that’s not bad, but still not playable. The 4890 crossfire though comes in at 51 fps, which is pretty much good enough, as far as I am concerned.
Lets now bump the settings to 1980x1200 with 4xAA, and all settings on high.
Well what can I say; Crysis is unplayable with even two of these cards on crossfire. But what is important to note here is the jump in FPS from a single card to a dual card setup, which is close to a 77% jump, making it almost playable!! This is in comparison to a 64% jump in performance at 1280x1024. So clearly the trend is towards a higher bump in performance as the resolution moves up.
[BREAK=Call Of Duty 4]
Call of Duty 4
The last test that I looked at was Call of Duty 4. This benchmark should give us a more practical view on the kind of performance we can get out of these cards.
Let’s start with 1280x1024 with 2xAA and 8xAF.
The 4890 on a single card setup is definitely playable at 123 FPS, but the performance of the 4890 crossfire is close to 70% better at 210 FPS.
Now let’s take the resolution up to 1980x1600 with all settings on high, with 4xAA and 16xAF.
Here the 4890 crossfire puts in a worthy performance with a an FPS of 146, as compared to a single card FPS of 78.6, which is close to an 86% increase in performance.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
So, that ends our testing for today, and after all this I sit to wonder as to how reviewers do 10 different tests, with 4 different resolutions!!!
Coming back to the review, there are a couple of points that i would like to highlight as a conclusion:
1. I see no real reason to spend the extra money on higher versions of the 4890, as even the base version is capable of over clocking quite a bit, without any temperature issues. I would gladly pickup the base version from Asus and use Riva tuner to up the voltage if required.
2. Multiple GPU scalability has improved significantly over the last few sets of drivers. The percentage increases at higher resolutions are really very good and I hope to see more driver updates pushing performance in crossfire mode.
3. And finally, with the imminent release of the 58xx cards, the prices on the 4890 should be more affordable in the near future. I would not be surprised to see it at around or lower than the USD 170 mark pretty soon, but as you all know prices of GPU's in India rarely compare to their USD rates. When rates do come down, getting two of these in CF would be more than enough for all your gaming needs for quite a while.
I hope you enjoyed this review and thanks for reading.
Happy gaming.
With the recent announcement and price points of the new 5850 and 5870 series by ATI, I thought it made sense to re visit the current top of the line offering from ATI, the Radeon 4890. We will see some softening of the prices from here and these may become the best bang for the buck GPU's. We are also going to take a look at the crossfire performance and scaling on these cards.
The Radeon 4890 was announced earlier this year and came with a new core, the RV 790. As compared to the 4870's 750 Mhz core clock, the 4890 comes with a default cock of 850 on the core and 975 Mhz on the memory.
Let’s take a look at the specifications:
Asus Radeon 4890
ROPs: 16
GPU: RV790
Transistor count: 959M
Memory size: 1024 MB
Memory bus width: 256 bit
Core clock: 850 Mhz
Memory clock: 975 Mhz
[BREAK=Unboxing and the Card]
Unboxing and the Card
I would like to thank Asus for sending across these excellent review samples. So let’s start by taking a look at the box, both front and back.
The outside of the box holds a picture of a knight on a horse, and its a design that Asus seems to like. But the main feature to look out for on the box is the "Voltage Tweak" option, which we will cover in greater detail once testing starts.
Once we open the outer box, we are greeted by a single black box, with an Asus logo on it. This is a very nice touch by Asus and also helps keep the card safe during shipping. This box contains all the CD's, the accessories and the card.
The accessories list is pretty long and has all the bells and whistles that you could have asked for. The card is nicely packaged in styrofoam and covered in an antistatic cover.
Now on to the card.
The card is protected with thick blue plastic shrouds for the crossfire connectors, the PCIe slots and the various connectors at the rear of the card.
The card itself does not look very different from the regular 4890, and Asus have continued with the red PCB that ATI is well known for. The black Knight as usual makes an appearance on top of the cooler. Other than this single sticker, the rest of the GPU is as per the reference PCB.
The rear of the card again has no surprises, with the normal layout.
These cards use the reference design and therefore the power is supplied by two 6 pin PCIe cables.
Finally we take a look at the connectors available on this card.
[BREAK=Test setup and Overclocking]
Test Setup and Overclocking
The test setup this time around, ....actually like all my other reviews is as follows:
Processor: AMD 720BE unlocked to 4 cores @ 3.0 Ghz
Motherboard: MSI GD70 790FX
Ram: OCZ 1600 Mhz Platinum
PSU: OCZ Modxtreme 700W Modular
Let’s start with the over clocking potential on this card. The cards I received were used by a number of reviewers before me, so I am quite sure they are not specially binned. I started by using the ATI overdrive over clocking function and got it to around 925/1150 on the core and memory respectively. I then used the Asus Smart Doctor Utility to up the core voltages a bit to 1.325 and was able to do 960/1150. For some reason the utility would not let me go above 1.325, so I left it at that.
Now that’s a lot of over clock for a GPU, with almost 13% on the core and close to 15.5% on the memory. Now imagine what two of these beasts can do for your gaming setup. With the core set at around 1.4, we can go to around 1000 MHz, but this was not to be. I am sure Asus has limited the range on the software, as the volterra chips used on these cards are capable of going up to the above mentioned 1.4-1.425.
[BREAK=3D Mark 06]
3d Mark 06
We are going to look at a total of three tests for this review. I am not going to use any of the over clocked settings for the tests as that’s not justified for now.
The first out of these is the popular benchmarking software, 3D Mark 06.
So let’s start with 1280x1024, with no AA and no AF.
The 4890 scores a respectable 15,978, which I would venture to say is faster than a stock GTX 260 216, which scored around 800 points less on the same setup.
But my total attention was on getting the scores for the crossfire setup and that blew me away with a score of 19,656.
Let’s now take a look at the same test at 1920 x 1200, as this is the resolution these cards are meant to be used at.
Again the stock card comes back with a reasonable score of 13,139 and a crossfire score of 18,334. This in my reckoning would be faster than a 295GTX on a similar setup.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis
So let’s move on to everyone's favorite gaming benchmark and see how the cards perform.
Again we will start with 1280x1024, with 2xAA.
At a low resolution the game is barely playable on a 4850 with all settings on high. On the 4890 we are at almost 31 FPS on an average and that’s not bad, but still not playable. The 4890 crossfire though comes in at 51 fps, which is pretty much good enough, as far as I am concerned.
Lets now bump the settings to 1980x1200 with 4xAA, and all settings on high.
Well what can I say; Crysis is unplayable with even two of these cards on crossfire. But what is important to note here is the jump in FPS from a single card to a dual card setup, which is close to a 77% jump, making it almost playable!! This is in comparison to a 64% jump in performance at 1280x1024. So clearly the trend is towards a higher bump in performance as the resolution moves up.
[BREAK=Call Of Duty 4]
Call of Duty 4
The last test that I looked at was Call of Duty 4. This benchmark should give us a more practical view on the kind of performance we can get out of these cards.
Let’s start with 1280x1024 with 2xAA and 8xAF.
The 4890 on a single card setup is definitely playable at 123 FPS, but the performance of the 4890 crossfire is close to 70% better at 210 FPS.
Now let’s take the resolution up to 1980x1600 with all settings on high, with 4xAA and 16xAF.
Here the 4890 crossfire puts in a worthy performance with a an FPS of 146, as compared to a single card FPS of 78.6, which is close to an 86% increase in performance.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
So, that ends our testing for today, and after all this I sit to wonder as to how reviewers do 10 different tests, with 4 different resolutions!!!
Coming back to the review, there are a couple of points that i would like to highlight as a conclusion:
1. I see no real reason to spend the extra money on higher versions of the 4890, as even the base version is capable of over clocking quite a bit, without any temperature issues. I would gladly pickup the base version from Asus and use Riva tuner to up the voltage if required.
2. Multiple GPU scalability has improved significantly over the last few sets of drivers. The percentage increases at higher resolutions are really very good and I hope to see more driver updates pushing performance in crossfire mode.
3. And finally, with the imminent release of the 58xx cards, the prices on the 4890 should be more affordable in the near future. I would not be surprised to see it at around or lower than the USD 170 mark pretty soon, but as you all know prices of GPU's in India rarely compare to their USD rates. When rates do come down, getting two of these in CF would be more than enough for all your gaming needs for quite a while.
I hope you enjoyed this review and thanks for reading.
Happy gaming.
