4890 Review Thread

[BFG10K]

Please keep all discussion related to 4890 reviews in this thread.

Video Mod BFG10K.


4890 only:
[*]PC Online.
[*]Gamestar.
[*]XBit Labs.
[*]Tweaktown.
[*]Guru3D.

4890 & GTX275:
[*]Anandtech.
[*]FiringSquad
[*]ComputerBase.
[*]Hardware Canucks.

 

[BFG10K]

So far it looks about ~10% faster than the 4870, so it's like a 4870 "Ultra". It'll be interesting to see power consumption and temperature readings.

 

[Tary88]

Second graph from bottom looks like power consumption numbers(maybe).

4890 - 145, 285
4870 - 141, 276
260 - 114, 260

 

[nib95]

Why do ATI cards have such terrible idle power consumption? It really bothers me. Especially since my computer is on so often, and electricity in the UK isn't cheap!

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: nib95
Why do ATI cards have such terrible idle power consumption? It really bothers me. Especially since my computer is on so often, and electricity in the UK isn't cheap!

It has to do with the GDDR5 iirc.

 

[chewietobbacca]

Not sure I'd rely on this "preview" - Crysis, for example, is capped at 31 fps for the carrd for some reason - they also had some fudgy numbers when the 4850/4870 came out, and we all know how that turned out

Anywho, a OC UK preview:

http://forums.overclockers.co....wthread.php?t=17991351

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: nib95
Why do ATI cards have such terrible idle power consumption? It really bothers me. Especially since my computer is on so often, and electricity in the UK isn't cheap!

It has to do with the GDDR5 iirc.

In what respect? When I the 2900XT came out, I remember there was a comparison with the GDDR3 version and the GDDR4 version and the GDDR4 version's power draw was up to 50watts lower than that of the GDDR3 version. I would have thought that GDDR5 would bring with it an even lower power envelope and consume even less power.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: nib95
Why do ATI cards have such terrible idle power consumption? It really bothers me. Especially since my computer is on so often, and electricity in the UK isn't cheap!

From what I've heard, I believe SSChevy talked about it, manually adjusting the 2D clocks lower than what they are stock improves its idle power consumption.

It's not that you can't get them to consume less power at idle, it's just that the stock 2D settings are taking a bit more than they really need.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
It'll be interesting to see power consumption and temperature readings.

I'd be willing to bet a temperature increase, since the core is at higher a frequency and the reference cooler seems to be the same as the reference 4870s.

 

[exar333]

Couple of comments here:

(1) Power consumption looks pretty acceptable here. With a ~10% improvement in performance, we have a 3-5% increase in idle and load power. That's good to see, but I am curious how much the power usage will climb as the reference clock is increased. Will this continue to be linear, or will we see it increase more exponentially.

(2) The performance increase seems to mirror what Nvidia did with the GTX 260 --> GTX 260 C216 last fall. The card was tweaked and we saw a ~10% increase in performance, at slightly above the previous price point (now they are below).

From a marketing perspective, this card makes a lot of sense. It helps fuel that this card competes with the GTX 280, the 4870 competes with the GTX 260, and 4850 competes with the GTS 250. I don't neccessarily agree that this card will quite meet the GTX 280/285, but it will be "somewhere in-between" the GTX 260 and 285. Both companies can cherry-pick their benchmarks as much as they want, the fanboys can scream about how one or the other "pwns at this game", but that is likely the fact of the matter.

This card will be a success if they can keep the cost ~$200.00-220.00. If it goes much higher than that, it just won't be worth an extra $75.00-100.00 over a MIR special on a 4870 1GB card at ~ $170.00.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Originally posted by: nib95
Why do ATI cards have such terrible idle power consumption? It really bothers me. Especially since my computer is on so often, and electricity in the UK isn't cheap!

I was a little shocked also when I heard the idle clocks on this card. Anyway let's look at the idle clocks for each card.

Ide clocks 4870 / 4890 / 4870x2 / GTX260
Core 500 / 240 / 500 / 300
Memory 900 / 975 / 507 / 100
Voltage 1.203 / ? / 1.05 / 1.03

You'll notice right away that the 4870 and 4890 don't downclock the memory at all. Then there's the question why the voltage is still so high when 4870x2 only uses 1.05v for idle.

Here's the lowest settings my 4870 runs at.
Core 200 ( makes little to no difference from 500 )
Memory 200
Voltage 1.083

After running those settings you'll notice right away the temps have gone down a lot.
http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/5227/idle4870.jpg

It just shows that after how long ATi still hasn't fixed powerplay.

 

[TC91]

Changing the vram clocks on my 4870 1gb causes severe atrocious screen shaking/flickering, I had to edit the clocks in the bios so it won't downclock to get rid of that. See here: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2289073&enterthread=y

 

[SSChevy2001]

Originally posted by: TC91
Changing the vram clocks on my 4870 1gb causes severe atrocious screen shaking/flickering, I had to edit the clocks in the bios so it won't downclock to get rid of that.

Yeah powerplay is crap on these cards, but just use ATT auto overclocking option instead. It will lock the idle or 3d clocks automaticly as need, and it also provides many other options.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Originally posted by: nib95
Why do ATI cards have such terrible idle power consumption? It really bothers me. Especially since my computer is on so often, and electricity in the UK isn't cheap!

From what I've heard, I believe SSChevy talked about it, manually adjusting the 2D clocks lower than what they are stock improves its idle power consumption.

It's not that you can't get them to consume less power at idle, it's just that the stock 2D settings are taking a bit more than they really need.

correct. for example, my 4850 used more power at idle than my gtx 260 does. nvidia has much more aggressively pursued the "power savings" market this round. Next round nvidia will probably focus more energy on making the "biggest, baddest mofo" of a card and let amd go for power savings, etc.

 

[evolucion8]

The difference between the HD 4850 and the GTX 260 in power consumption at idle is insignificant

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=22

The power consumption of the GTX 260 216 is slighly higher than the GTX 260 standard

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3408&p=9

 

[initialised]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Originally posted by: BFG10K
It'll be interesting to see power consumption and temperature readings.

I'd be willing to bet a temperature increase, since the core is at higher a frequency and the reference cooler seems to be the same as the reference 4870s.

87C after 10 minutes and 15 seconds of furmark at 1920x1200 8xAA + Post Processing
See: http://www.cyberpowersystem.co...rum_posts.asp?TID=3786 It's not exactly a review just our test results

 

[MrK6]

Originally posted by: initialised

Originally posted by: josh6079

Originally posted by: BFG10K
It'll be interesting to see power consumption and temperature readings.

I'd be willing to bet a temperature increase, since the core is at higher a frequency and the reference cooler seems to be the same as the reference 4870s.

87C after 10 minutes and 15 seconds of furmark at 1920x1200 8xAA + Post Processing
See: CyberPowerUK ForumsCyberpower forums">null</a> It's not exactly a review just our test results

Link's broken, but I Googled it: http://www.cyberpowersystem.co...rum_posts.asp?TID=3786

Great read, good work! I'd be curious to see the maximum overclock achievable (the 950MHz used in the review is already more than any 4870 can do on air).

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
The difference between the HD 4850 and the GTX 260 in power consumption at idle is insignificant

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=22

The power consumption of the GTX 260 216 is slighly higher than the GTX 260 standard

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3408&p=9

maybe it was just because I was an early adopter, but you can definitely tell a tremendous difference between the 4850 and the gtx 260 core 216. I managed to convince myself to go for the 4850 even though I spent many many months extolling the virtues of the 3870's dual slot fan. Well, I suffered when I really started using the 4850 because the fan could get extremely loud when it ramped up (damn single slot!!), plus it just dumped the heat into my case. I run seti 24/7 as well, so having a strong cooling fan on the video card plus dumping that extra heat out the back is very important for me obviously. It's also nice that I don't have to either a.) listen to the fan agressively ramp up periodically, or b.) turn the fan up to a noticeable level when gaming.

 

[initialised]

Best OC I've seen was 1050/1175 (posted on XS forums I think) I'll see what I can do next week.

 

[sufoexe]

hey guys i just spot it at fry's for 279.99 should i buy it?

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: sufoexe
hey guys i just spot it at fry's for 279.99 should i buy it?

I just paid $159 shipped AR for a gtx 260 core 216 that is also about 10% faster than a 4870 1gb (since it came with a 13% oc). 279.99 sounds like a good price to me!

 

[evolucion8]

The overclocking doesn't scale linearly with the performance improvements, there's always some other areas that can be a bottleneck, and the performance difference between the HD 4870 1GB and the GTX 260 varies by games, GRID for example runs so great in the HD 4870 that's actually as fast as the much more expensive GTX 285, while other games like Deadspace runs much faster on the GTX 260.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

The difference between the HD 4850 and the GTX 260 in power consumption at idle is insignificant

Yeah, except the GTX260 is a good 30%-50% faster than the 4850. nVidia has power management won this generation, hands down.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Originally posted by: evolucion8

The difference between the HD 4850 and the GTX 260 in power consumption at idle is insignificant

Yeah, except the GTX260 is a good 30%-50% faster than the 4850. nVidia has power management won this generation, hands down.

yes! and they're competitive as well, with $300 off original msrp

 

[BFG10K]

Launch date moved forward to 2nd April?

http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-brings-foward-hd-4890-launch-date-to-2nd-april/6795.html?doc=6795