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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SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
So he just told you why he's gettting NVidia, and the little red fanboy in you couldn't stand it. You recommend taking steps that void the warranty, but why should you care - then you blabber about a 4850, but he already noted the 260 - and finally you let the last word in you could barely bring your red rooster self to say GTS250 - as in you might as well get it.... if you have to - 'cept he was already looking above that.You red ragers just have to spew about your crap card to people who already seemingly decided they don't want it. Why is that ?
You gonna offer him red cuda, red physx, red vreveal, red badaboom, red forced game profiles, red forced dual gpu ? ANY OF THAT ?
NO -
you tell him to HACK a red piece of crap to make it reasonable. LOL
What a shame.
Hey, maybe he can hack the buzzing fan on it , too ?
helldrell666 - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
What the hell are you talking about?Im not a fan boy of any of those big companies that don't give a shit about me.
I have used both nvidia and ATI, and both produce great graphics cards.
I had a 8800gtx before my current 4870, and i had and athlon x2 6400+ before my current core i7 920.I go with whoever has the product with the best price.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
No, you are a fanboy and you are exposed. Deal with it.helldrell666 - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
It's you, who the fanboy is.You're trying hard to show the advantages of nvidia cards over the ATI cards, and guess what, you fail.And i don't give a rat ass about CUDA.Im a gamer, and what matters to me is the card's gaming performance and the features that enhance my my gaming experience "which is what 99.9% of who buy those cards care for", Like physx, which is a true con for nvidia cards.But physx isn't supported on most games, and the physx effects that nvidia is trying to promote can be easily processed on a decent sub 300$ cpu by enahncing the on cpu physx performance via a driver/software that could utilize all cpu cores and utiliz the cpu processing power in a better way.
Ohh wait.ATI has DX10.1 and tessellation which nvidia doesn't have, and thanks to your nvidia, we didn't get much games that support
DX10.1, and we didn't get any game that supports tessellation which is a geometry accelerating technique that can accelerate geometry processing by up to 4 times using the same amount of floating points aka. processing power.If tessellation, which is included in ATI cards APIs since the Hd2000 series days, was used in those demanding games like crysis and stalker, we would've been able to play them using sub 300$ graphics solutions.Put aside the DX10.1 features like the aa enhancement.....and the GRS color detector that allows the gpu to use more accurate color degree for a texel using a more advanced texturing algorithm compared to the tri/bi-linear buffering teqnique used in nvidia's illegal uncompleted DX10 API.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
rofl - the long list of your imaginary hatreds against nvidia - you FREAK fanboy.The problem being, that just like some lying retard, you blame ati's epic failure with tessalation on who ? ROFL NVIDIA.
Sorry bub, you're another one who is INSANE.
You won't face what IS - you want something that isn't - wasn't - or won't be - so keep on WHINING forever, looney tuner.
In the mean time, nvidia users outnumber you, enjoy the large amount of added benefits, and don't have a 2 billion dollar loss hanging over their heads - with a company that might collapse in bankruptcy - and lose support of the already problematci drivers.
You bought the wrong thing, now you have a hundred could be would be if and an's and garbage can complaints that have nothing to do with reality and how it actually is.
Fantasy red rooster fanboy.
LOL - it's amazing.
helldrell666 - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
Freak fanboy......? Hatred....? Are you serious...or ....?I don't hate any company because i have no reason to.I blame nvidia for not allowing those few developed games companies to include those great features in these very few modern demanding games.
Accelerating physx processing using the gpu is a great idea, but is it worth it?
Is the cpu realy unable to keep up with the gpu in games due to it's slow physx processing ability?
Are those primitive physx effects realy that heavy n a modern quad core cpu?
These are questions that you should ask yourself before trolling for the idea.
And i have to remind you that ATI has coded Havok physx effects in
OPEN-CL programming language, which in case you don't know, is standard langauage compared to nvidia CUDA, which is based on some kind of c programming codes.
Talking about the drivers, i haven't had problems with my 4870 on MY Vista 64bit OS, compared to my old 8800gtx that almost brought me a heart attack.
As for your beloved nvidia, we need nvidia as much as we need AMD and INTEL to keep the competetition alive, which in its turn will keep innovations going and adjust the prices.
Ohh... and thanx to the red camp, we can get a decent graphics card for less than 300$.so have some respect for them.
as for you, i wonder how old you are, cuz you don't seem to have a mature logic.
tamalero - Monday, April 20, 2009 - link
dont worry, this guy clearly as mental issues, a nvidia paid troll.SiliconDoc - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
Yeah, sure. Just like any red rooster, you never had a problem with ati drivers, but nvidia drove you nearly to a heart attack, but I have problems with logic or detecting a red rooster fanboy blabberer ! ROFLDude, you keep digging your own hole deeper.
Then you try the immature assault - another losing proposition.
YOU'RE WHINING about nvidia and yeah, you do blame them, and after going on like a lunatic about wanting offload to the cpu, you admit it might not work - yes I read your asinine quadcore offload blabberings, too, and your bloody ragging about nvidia "not letting" your insane fantasy occur - purportedly to advantage ati (not like you're banking on intel graphics).
So red rooster, keep crowing, and never face the reality that is, and carry that chip for all your imiginary grievances of what should be or, what you say could have been.
In the mean time, know you are marked, and I know who and what you are, and I'm sure you'll have further whining and wailing about what nvidia did or didn't do for ati. LOL
roflmao
Logic ? ROFLMAO
" I, almost had a heart attack " said the sissy. lol " But I'm an objective person with logic ". roflmao
Jamahl - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Wow what a stunning pile of crap i've just read.ATI's can fold, guess what it's downloaded via CCC.
ATI has open source cloth physx, stream and avivo which pisses all over that trash nvidia call 'purevideo' or whatever.
But best of all, you can ACTUALLY BUY A 4890 whereas the 275 only exists in the Nvidia fanbois tiny little green with envy minds.
The0ne - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
If you haven't noticed, SiliconDoc is basically ignored in all his responses. Be wise and do that same. He'll eventually kill himself :)