Two months later and this thing can be had for $150 AR. Prices are falling fast it seems.

well i would like to tell that amd's architecture is much more efficient than nvidia's as radeon 4890 ( with 0.96 bn transistors and 16 rops 256 bit) edges out gtx 275 (with 1.4 bn transistors and 24 rops 448 bit) you guys have to appriciate that. and well you guys might think that 4890 loses to gtx 275 in resolutions like 2560 * 1200 but hey if a guy can afford a big HD monitor having this resolution then he would sure not to choose either of these cards but would have chose something like 4870 x 2 or gtx 295.as for me radeon is a clear winner but im not buying these cards when DX 11 cards are in the corner.

Does TR have any comment on this claim from Charlie?

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/599/1051599/nvidia-hoodwin...

Meanwhile I see no need to upgrade my 8800GT SLI system. At least I can Cuda stuff without interrupting desktop rendering, and those only cost me $100 a piece.

My 8800GT is weeping softly in its slot.

Interesting. Cards so close in performance that other metrics will finally be a real deciding factor. I see a increased race to the bottom in a price war with this one.

My only complaint about the 4890 is the noise. I hadn't bought a new/current video card since 2004 and the solutions I've been getting by with were practically silent. When this thing cranks up it's not exactly like a hair dryer, but that's probably the easiest way to describe the sound.

These articles are what TR is all about! Awesome and I am not even in the market to build another PC for about another 3 or 4 years. :)

I'm totally not getting either of these.

I want a 30" screen next up, then I'll worry about the card. Right now nothing hurts at 1920x1200+1600x1200 on 24"+20".

i find that little "capacitor ring" pretty interesting. i wonder if we can expect to see it in the R8xx's, along with higher clock speeds across the board for those chips.

I skipped the whole damn thing after reading 181's on 285, 185's on 275. L4D got much smoother and performance got quite a kick going from 181.xx to 182.xx on my 285 @ 8x MSAA.

Fail.

Well-done Scott.

I particularly liked the sarcasm on page #3 with the 'features' game. A smile on my face makes the time you put into the review worth it dude.

I'm still happily using my old 8800GTS 512 and until something comes along that forces me to upgrade (a new game it can't run well at 19x12 and makes less-noise and generates less-heat) I will not be upgrading.

In a way that sort of summarizes how good AMD's and NVIDIA's chips are these last two years-and-change... I can't recall a time when it was possible to enjoy the latest games at high-res with a two-plus-year-old card.

I like the GTX285 but not its power-draw under load or its size.

I liked the HD4870 512MB. I still own it but don't use it as I had problems with blu-ray playback and I *hate* not being able to alt-tab out from within a paused game and having the games crash every time I try it - maybe it has been fixed in more recent drivers but I still don't like the heat or noise that the HD4870 makes in comparison to my good old 8800GTS 512. No they are not competitive products, but it's all about balance.

You can get the overclocking feature back if you use the older version of nTune 5.0 something. This works on Vista x64. Using the brand new version of the utility does remove it though.

The transistor count is up, as well, from an estimated 956 million in the RV770 to 959 million in the RV790.

It's "an estimated" 95x million transistors? Do you mean AMD don't know how many transistors are on their chips, or did you mean "approximately"?

GDDR5 clock speeds are up, as well, from 900MHz on the stock Radeon HD 4870 to 975MHz on the 4890. That may sound like a modest increase—and to some extent, it is—but keep in mind that GDDR5 memory transfers data four times per clock, so even smaller increments can add up.

It's modest (i.e. a bit over 8%) regardless of how many transfers per clock there are.

Not too happy to see the 4890 review was with a factory OC'd board, sigh.

Damn I just recommended a pal get a GTX 285 (damn it's fast in Crysis!) but having read this, I dunno maybe he should've got something else.

I own a 4870 512mb and the re-sale value would be about 175$ AUD - I can't see anything which distinctively blows my card away yet though.
(I refuse to purchase dual GPU cards, horrible things, trouble, noisy, hot, driver issues - single GPU only for me - it's a personal rule)

The 4890 and GTX 285 seem to be the fastest single chip solutions out there (right?) when will we see the GTX 385 and the radeon 58xx (or whatever they will be called?) Another 6 months I guess.
(Assuming the cycle hasn't slowed down due to the global economic crises :( ... )

i still use my heritage ASUS Radeon 7000 128MB

This was a fantastic review.
When are we going to see 275 in SLI? :)

excellent review as always, the explicit isomorphism between both vendors' offerings was really well executed!

it's definitely an extremely difficult decision, and i'm looking to replace my 8800gts 640mb. don't want to buy the titanic g80 g90 gt200 monster, but it does have good idle power draw... i want to support amd, but nvidia have the linux support...

Thanks for the great review Damage.
Just about every serious video card fan around the Net has been waiting for the final word from TR.
It's always a pleasure to read the reviews here...especially when the red car wins :)

From the article:

I had hoped to test with a non-OC version of the Radeon HD 4890, as well, but we don't have such a card in our possession, and apparently the Overdrive feature in AMD's driver control panel doesn't support underclocking.

Are you sure about this? Overdrive lets me underclock my 4870 all the way down to 500MHz GPU, 450MHz memory, and [H]'s review shows a screenshot of the Overdrive control panel for their 4890 that lets it underclock down to the same level:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYzNiw4LCxoZW50aHVz...

They used the same driver version you did, too, so it can't be explained by a difference in the driver.

Great review, thanks Damage! I wonder about one thing though, sure it takes time to test all of them, but don't you think that using some of the HD4850 and HD4870's with older drivers might be misleading? Thanks!

BTW, isn't it kinda weird that HD4850 is using more power than HD4870 1GB when stressed?

Folding @ Home on Nvid Cards tip the scale in their favor for me. On Average Nvid cards are almost twice as fast at folding. I'd love to see TR add a folding ppd section for this very reason. See this Tech Power Up coverage which collaberates every google search comparison I've done comparing Nvid Vs AMD/ATI:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_4890/23.html

I am running three folding rigs 24/7. Power consumption and points per day are absolutely critical. That is why I use all 216 GTX 260's (two are 55nm). I'm getting around 20,000 points per day on the three.

Konstantine's post nuked for profanity.

Mmmm, I'm really going to just wait for the 6xxx series. My 4870 is still doing it's job. :)

You know ambient occlusion is a garbage post-processing effect when you have to DRAW AN ARROW to it, just to be able to notice it.

phez's post nuked for profanity.

Great review! but wow, 90 degees at load? thats insane in the membrane! i'm guessing that passive cooling is off limits. lol!

my mind is however made up. will wait for dx11 cards in a few months.

Holy crap. 250 bucks buys you a GPU that can play games at 2560X1600? That's freaking sweet.

I just liked the CUDA/Stream madlibs. That was pure Damage :)