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
Final Words
NVIDIA is competitive at this new price point of $250 depending on what resolution you look at. We also see some improvement from NVIDIA's new 185 series driver and get a new feature to play with in the form of Ambient Occlusion. We did look at PhysX and CUDA again, and, while we may be interested in what is made possible by them, there is still a stark lack of compelling content that takes advantage of these technologies. We can't recommend prioritizing PhysX and CUDA over performance, and performance is where a GPU needs to compete. Luckily for NVIDIA, the GTX 275 does.
The fact that its worst-case performance is still better than the GTX 260 core 216 and in the best case, it can hit that of the GTX 280 was a plus for the GTX 275. It often posted performance more in line with its bigger brothers than a $50+ cheaper part. This is pretty sweet for a $250 card, especially as many games these days rely very heavily on shader performance. The GeForce GTX 275 is a good fit for this price point, and is a good option. But then there's the Radeon HD 4890.
The 4890, basically a tweaked and overclocked 4870, does improve performance over the 4870 1GB and puts up good competition for the GTX 275. On a pure performance level the 4890 and GTX 275 trade blows at different resolutions. The 4890 tends to look better at lower resolutions while the GTX 275 is more competitive at high resolutions. At 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 the 4890 is nearly undefeated. At 2560 x 1600, it seems to be pretty much a wash between the two cards.
At the same time, there are other questions, like that of availability. With these parts performing so similarly, and price being pretty well equal, the fact that AMD parts can be bought starting today and we have to wait for the NVIDIA parts is an advantage for AMD. However, we have to factor in the fact that AMD driver support doesn't have the best track record as of late for new game titles. Add in the fact that NVIDIA's developer relations seem more effective than AMD's could mean more titles that run better on NVIDIA hardware in the future. So what to go with? Really it depends on what resolutions you're targeting and what the prices end up being. If you've got a 30" display then either card will work, it's just up to your preference and the items we talked about earlier. If you've got a 24" or smaller display (1920x1200 or below), then the Radeon HD 4890 is the card for you.
AMD tells us that most retailers will feature mail in rebates of $20, a program which was apparently underwritten by AMD. Could AMD have worried they weren't coming in at high enough performance late in the game and decided to try and throw an extra incentive in there? Either way, not everyone likes a mail in rebate. I much prefer the instant variety and mail-in-rebate offers do not make decisions for me. We still compare products based on their MSRP (which is likely the price they'll be back at once the rebate goes away). This is true for both AMD and NVIDIA parts.
There will also be overclocked variants of the GTX 275 to compete with the overclocked variants from AMD. The overclock on the AMD hardware is fairly modest, but does make a difference and the same holds true for the GTX 275 products in early testing. We'll have to take a look at how such parts compare in the future along with SLI and CrossFire. In the meantime, we have another interesting battle at the $250 price point.
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Warren21 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Yeah, I don't know why they're playing this off as an RV770 overclock. RV790 is indeed a respin of RV770, but hey if nV can get by with 1000 different variants on the same GT200... Why not mention the benefits/differences between the RV770 and the RV790? Disappointed.SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
I guess they didn't mention the differences ? Tell you what, when ati gets 999 more rebrands and catches up with their competitotr, we'll call it even, ok ?In the mean time, the 4870 crossfires with the 4980, and soon enough we'll have the gamer joe reviewers that downclock the 4890 and find it has identical results to the same clocked 4870 - at that point the red roosters will tuck their flapping feathers and go home.
I know, it's hard to see it coming, when all you can see is s tiny dot of red, in a sea of 1000 choices of green. rofl
bill3 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
According to info at other sites, the 4890 has 3 million more transistors (959 instead of 956, very little difference). It also has a somewhat larger die due to tweaks made to allow the higher clocks.Go to Firing Squad or Xbitlabs review, both have an certain ATI slide that explains the small changes in detail.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
" Because they’re so similar, the Radeon 4870 and 4890 can be combined together for mix-and-match CrossFire, just like the 4850 and 4870. "I guess it's not a rebrand.
roflmao
bill3 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_489...">http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati..._4890_nv...The slide is the first clickable pic on that page, actually. Didn't realize we could do links.
bill3 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Or even betterhttp://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_489...">http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati...0_nvidia...
heh
Proteusza - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Thanks guys, good read.The piece on PhysX kinda mirrors my thoughts on it - its not worth basing a GPU purchasing a decision on it because it affects so few games. If you design your game around PhysX, you end up making a gimmicky game, if you design a good game and think of good ways to let PhysX enhance it, you can make something good like Mirror's Edge.
The way I think about PhysX is based on Amdahl's law, which says that overrall speedup of a CPU from an enhancement that affects only a certain class of application is affected by the amount of time spent using that certain class of application. In the case of PhysX, the amount of time spent using it is generally extremely low, and when it is used the effect isnt always noticeable or worth having.
NVidia's marketing tactics leave a lot to be desired frankly, although I'm not naive enough to say AMD never tries a little marketing manipulation themselves.
Sylvanas - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Why on earth would you compare a newly released Nvidia driver to that of an ATI driver from December last year and a Hotfix at that? The latest ATI drivers have had substantial improvements in a few games and surely they would have sent you an up to date driver with the 4890 review sample- somethings not right there. Also, where was the overclocking comparisons? (some reviews stating 1ghz core 4890 no problem). What about Temps and Stock cooling fan noise?7Enigma - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I'm a bit disappointed with the ATI card. That is pretty much the Sapphire Vapochill model with increased core (actually it's a slightly slower memory setting). At least the GTX 275 is something different.bill3 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Wow lol..both cards are just rehashes. Calling the Nvidia card "something different" is a hell of a stretch.. it's just their same other cards with various clocks twiddled for the trillionth time.If anything the ATI card brings more to the table, as it offers much more clock headroom (1ghz is said to be well within reach) due to it's redesign, while the Nvidia card is nothing at all new intrinsically (aka it will overclock similar to the 285). Too be fair Nvidia's better clock-capable models (285) just came out a couple months earlier instead of now.