Overclocking Extravaganza: Radeon HD 4890 To The Max
by Derek Wilson on April 29, 2009 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
All but two.
That's how many benchmarks in which our 1GHz/1.2GHz (core/mem) Radeon HD 4890 lead the stock NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285. That's nothing to sneeze at. Certainly it doesn't mean that the 4890 is faster or better than the GTX 285, especially because the GTX 285 can be overclocked as well to improve performance. What this does mean is that for about $100 less we have the potential to achieve the stock performance of NVIDIA's flagship single GPU part with a highly overclocked AMD GPU. From an end user value perspective, that extra $100 is there to ensure you get at least the performance of the GTX 285 along with any potential overclocking benefits you might have from the higher end part. There is still reason to buy the GTX 285 if you need even more power. But this is quite intriguing from an architectural perspective.
These tests show that there is the potential for a 959 Million transistor AMD GPU to consistently outperform a 1.4 Billion transistor NVIDIA GPU in the same power envelope at 55nm with similar memory bandwidth.
Yields and business being what they are, it doesn't make sense for AMD to push out a part at the extreme clock speeds we tested. But from an engineering standpoint, even with the smaller die, less is more, multiGPU at the top end strategy, AMD has built a part that can (when overclocked) best the stock performance of top of the line NVIDIA hardware designed to pack as much power into a single GPU as possible.
And that seems pretty significant.
At the same time, while we don't have any solid standardized OpenCL tests to run as of yet, it appears from some limited applications like folding@home and others that NVIDIA's approach may be better suited to GPU computing or more general purpose or flexible applications beyond gaming. We can't really confirm this theory yet, as there isn't a wide enough range of GPU computing applications, but it might not be that NVIDIA has been pushing CUDA so hard because they know it to be an advantage, not just in terms of software support and a feature check box, but in terms of a fundamental performance or architectural edge for these algorithms. The architectural path NVIDIA has chosen may well prove useful when DX11 hits and we see a further push away from DX9 towards really deep programmability and flexibility. Only time will tell on that front, though.
In the meantime, NVIDIA's margins are much tighter on their larger GPUs and now their single GPU performance advantage has started to erode. It seems the wonders of the RV7xx series have yet to exhaust themselves. Competition is indeed a wonderful thing, and we can't wait to see what comes out of the upcoming DX11 hardware battle.
For now, at resolutions below 2560x1600, the Radeon HD 4890 has the advantage. At 2560x1600, the lines become a little more blurry. For stock hardware the GTX 285 is still the fastest thing around in most cases. But if you want to take your chances with overclocking, 30" gaming on a single AMD GPU just got a lot more potentially attractive.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
61 Comments
View All Comments
gold333 - Monday, May 4, 2009 - link
Guru3d has OC reports of both. The GTX275 seems to be clearly in the lead.SiliconDoc - Saturday, June 6, 2009 - link
" Guru3d has OC reports of both. The GTX275 seems to be clearly in the lead. "--
This is red roosterville. Compare the special edition from manufacturer ATI 4890 to the standard or sub OC GTX275, then spin it up more for the red roosters with special custom game profiles, resolution and game settings, and leave PhysX ON even if the game doesn't use it.
Post the massively biased results and provclaim ATI the overall superking winner.
Allow your red rooster fanbase and anyone else enjoy the fantasy, while lying as much as possible, and apologizing every time the bias is pointed out by a poster, claiming you didn't know, you'll fix it, that's a good question, you'll get to it, you didn't mean to compare Oc'ed ATI to stock GTX275 - etc etc etc .
--
That's why other reviews so often show the GTX275 way ahead. Not every single one - there are more red rooster stations about, but hey, some people like Derek just can't help themselves.
joeysfb - Thursday, April 30, 2009 - link
How to be fair?.. Overclocking is subjective in nature... So if Derek's card can overclock to 1G/1.2G and the one i bought can't do it. What's next?...This article is about 4890, GTX275 will have another article for itself. Beside, you are pretty fix that GTX275 is the better card anyway...
ira176 - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I've heard the rumor that the Radeon HD 5000 is around the corner, but will ATI incorporate 40 nm tech into the HD 4870 and 4890?Wouldn't it be a pretty neat card if Sapphire could get their hands on an HD 4890 with 40 nm tech and the Vapor-X cooling solution!
Shadowmage - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
... you could have presented the graphs in a much more readable manner. The only thing you were really doing was finding the Amdahl's Law curves for the part.Watch out for sentence fragments in the future too :)
As an aside, usually mainstream hardware reviewers are absolutely horrible and incompetent at overclocking, so it's refreshing to see some results that actually match what end-users have been reaching on various enthusiast forums (~1GHz core clocks on stock air).
DerekWilson - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Thanks for the suggestions. Can you email me the sentence fragments :-)And actually we'd probably see more overclocking articles if I didn't take it seriously... I'm not the best at it, but I do what I can.
corporategoon - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Quite a few folks in here are talking about messing with voltages - how do you do this? I have a 4870 with a thermalright cooler and I'd love to mess with voltages to get some extra performance out of it, but have had no luck searching for a utility that'll let me do this.DerekWilson - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
the ASUS card we tested actually comes with a utility to tweak its voltage. there are some hardware mods out there as well ... if you're really hard core you can go check out mvktech.net and download some bios readers/writers and editors and really go crazy (and possibly destroy your card).but there are options.
our tests were done without voltage mods.
walp - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Awesome test!I bought the 4890 for three reasons:
-Its funny to overclock and see the range soooaaAAaaaar!
-Its relatively cheap for top of the line performance (when overclocked to 1000\1150 @ 1.43V ^^) as you can clearly see!
-Its totally compatible with the accelero s1 which currently keeps my GPU below the 64°C at full load furmark. And its soooo silent! Gotta love it! 19 bucks for a kick ass cooler!
Enjoy the silence, and powah! :D
And when the games become more demanding, I will buy another one! (hopefully a lot cheaper, and a lot more developed x-fire drivers!)
Cause, I can play Crysis 1920x1080, very high, everything maxxed in Catalyst 8x AA, 16x AF etc. ~40-50fps AWESOME-O! :D
(4.4GHz E8500, 4GB ram)
Its a pity though that it costed me 2500kr incl. shipping (~300$) here in sweden, but its worth every Krona! :)
kmmatney - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Thanks for letting me know that it's compatible with the accerero S1! I would love this card if it were a little more quiet. Is this the one you have?http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Where did you get it for $19? I see this one for $19:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
With my HD4890, there's a lot of heat coming out the back vent, so I'm a bit leary about using something like this, but if it makes the card cooler and quieter, then I'm all for it.