ATI Radeon HD 4890 vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on April 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack: Finally, a Major Title
Unreal Tournament 3. Metacritic gives it an 83 for “Generally favorable reviews” and NVIDIA released a PhysX mod pack for it last year. Now we’re getting somewhere.
The mod pack consists of three levels that use GPU accelerated PhysX. The rest of the game is left unchanged. You can run these levels without GPU acceleration, but they’re much slower.
The three levels are HeatRay, Lighthouse and Tornado. Guess what the PhysX does in Tornado?
Ben and I played HeatRay together (aw, cute). First the PhysX enabled level with GPU acceleration turned off, then with it turned on and then the standard level that doesn’t use any GPU accelerated PhysX at all.
Turning the PhysX acceleration on made a huge difference, we both agreed. The game was much faster, much more playable. The most noticeable PhysX effect was hail falling from the sky, and lots of it. You could blow up signs in the level but the hail was by far the most noticeable part. Note that I said noticeable, not desirable.
See all of the white pellets? Yeah, that's what PhysX got us in UT3.
Playing the normal version of the HeatRay map was far more fun for both of us. The hail was distracting. Each of the hundreds of pellets hit the ground and bounced off in a physically accurate manner, but in doing so it sounded like I was running through a tunnel full of bead curtains suspended from the ceiling. Not to mention the visual distraction of tons of pellets hitting the ground all of the time. Ben and I both liked the level without the hail. The point of the hail? Not to make the level cooler, but rather to truly stress the PPU/GPU - particles are one of the most difficult things to do on the CPU thanks but work very well on the GPU. This wasn’t a fun level, this was a benchmark.
Tornado was the turning point for us. As the name implies, there’s a giant tornado flying through this capture the flag level. The tornado is physically accurate, if you shoot rockets at it, they fly around and get sucked into the funnel or redirected depending on their angle of incidence. It’s neat.
The tornado sucks up everything around it but if you’re looking to relive Wizard of Oz fantasies I’ve got bad news: you are immune from its sucking power. You just stay on the ground and lose health. Great.
Ben’s take on the tornado level? “It was neat”. I agreed. Not compelling enough for me to tattoo PhysX on my roided up mousing-arm, but the most impressive thing we’d seen thus far.
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jeffrey - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
1) ATI driver - Was 8.12 really used? Why? 9.3 was released last month.2) Conclusion - The edge should have gone to the 4890 for being ahead of the 275 in most games at resolutions targeting the price point.
Gary Key - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
1. The 9.4 beta was used for the HD 4890 and the chart has been updated to reflect it. The 9.3 drivers are not any faster than the 8.12 HotFix for the other AMD cards in every test I have run but Crysis Warhead with a Core 2 Quad. A few improvements have been made for CF compatibility and video playback though.2. The conclusion has been updated to clarify our thoughts between the two cards.
can - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
An ATI gpu with and nvidia gpu doing physx? I'm curious to see results of this kind of arrangement. Not a dedicated PCI Physx card, but on a faster bus, with a more powerful processor, as a video card. I'm wondering about pitfalls and performance and the literal looks of the application.SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Sorry bub, you're stuck with ati, and as far as curiosity for physx - uhh... don't worry, you're not missing much, anand only got addicted to it for a bit.If you want the driver hack for it, there's a thread at techpowerup.
Some genius figured something out on it- not sure which os.
Jamahl - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
The conclusion in this review is awful beyond anything I have read before.How can the reviewer say the 275 is winning this one when the benchmarks clearly show dominance for the 4890 at most resolutions?
Otherwise it was a good article but the conclusion leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
He could say it because he said it for ati for 6 months when ati won the top resolution. So his brain is in a "fart mode" that lied for ati for so long, he said it this time for nvidia - either that or he realized if he didn't he would look like an exposed raging red rooster fanboy.Good thing the reds started screaming NOW, after loving it for 6 months when their card was on top using the false method - because anand came in and saved the day - and changed the conclusion - for ati.
LOL
When nvidia doesn't give them a card for review again, it will be "them towing the line of honesty" that causes, no doubt, right ?
BWAHAHAHAAAAAAA
( you all just tell yourselves that along with our dear leaders )
erikejw - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
"On the NVIDIA side, we received a reference version of the GTX 275."You wish.
"since there is no 275 ASIC, NV is telling OEMs that they can make it from either a 280 or 260 board. One costs much more, and one performs better, so guess what everyone is going to use?
That isn't necessarily bad, but how NV is seeding reviewers is. They are only going to be giving out a very special run of ONLY 280 based parts.
Quite special 280 based parts at that. Reviewers beware, what you are getting is not what you can buy."
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/599/10515...">http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new...ia-hoodw...
bill3 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
A lot of people seem to be crying about lack of temp, power consumption, oc, and fan noise numbers..while I agree in a stand alone review these are glaring omissions, the fact is theres a dozen reviews around the web where you can get that info in triplicate. I would much rather have the insight on CUDA and PHysx!I mean, people act like the internet isnt free and we all arent a google search/mouse click away from that type of info! Geez.
That said, I suppose reviews must be treated as "stand alone", however artificial a construct it may be. However if theres anything thats easily forgivable to be left out it's simple data numbers that can be found at a thousand other places. Which is exactly what temp, oc, etc are. I already know those numbers from a ton of other reviews. These people whining in the comments act like Anand is the only hardware review site there is. I would think if anybody was truly interested in laying out 250 to purchase one of these theyd be looking at more than one review!
SkullOne - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I second the question about why did you use Catalyst 8.12 Hotfix? Other sites are using what appears to be an Beta Catalyst 9.4 driver so is your listing of Catalyst 8.12 a misprint?Also why do you care if AMD sent you an overclocked version? The HD4890 is directly targeted at the overclocking enthusiasts which is a realm that AMD has ignored up until now while NV embraced it.
The HD4890 has already been taken to 1+GHz on it's GPU and up to 4.8GHz on it's memory on other sites. That by far makes it the better buy.
SkullOne - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Forgot to mention that by having this extremely overclockable card AMD has opened up another entire SKU for themselves by selling "OC" cards with the 4890.