Price: $200 US
Radeon HD 4890 main features:
- GPU: RV790 @ 850MHZ / 55nm
- Shader cores: 800
- Memory: 1024Mb GDDR5 @ 975Mhz (or 3900MHz DDR) / 256-bit
- Texture units: 40
- ROPs: 16
- Direct3D 10.1 and OpenGL 2/3
The Radeon HD 4890 is essentially an overclocked version of the Radeon HD 4870 (GPU @ 750MHz and memory @ 3600MHz). The Radeon HD 4890 is meant to compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 275.
Quite possibly my most disliked graphics card of 2009 was the Radeon HD 4890. Although the naming does suggest that the 4890 is not a great deal faster than the 4870 that was not what bothered us. Rather it was the fact that this newer slightly improved version cost anywhere from 20 – 30% more while providing just a few extra frames per second in most games.
With the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 selling for just $180 US in April when the Radeon HD 4890 was released, we found it hard to accept this new graphics card at $250 US. After all Radeon HD 4890 is in essence just an overclocked Radeon HD 4870 with far greater overclocking abilities. ATI fine-tuned the RV790 XT core allowing for incredible core frequencies.
Although the default core speed of 850MHz is a moderate bump over the 4870, many users are reporting overclocks in the order of 1GHz and beyond. Still despite the great overclocking abilities of the new Radeon HD 4890 we were not sold as the price premium was just too difficult to justify.
Furthermore Nvidia was able to swiftly counter the Radeon HD 4890 with what I considered at the time to be a better product, the GeForce GTX 275. As luck would have it, the GeForce GTX 275 was not just a quick and easy counter for the Radeon HD 4890, it was the perfect counter. Prior to the launch of these two cards the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 were already doing battle. The Radeon HD 4890 was meant to outclass both products and conquer the $250 price range but evidently that didn't go as planned.
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