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.
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Sylvanas - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
This is exactly the kind of review I like to see, overclockability is a major factor for me in purchasing new hardware. Better than the 4890 launch article, good job.SiliconDoc - Saturday, June 6, 2009 - link
Better remember this then:" We absolutely must caution our readers once again that these are not off-the-shelf retail parts. These are parts sent directly to us from manufacturers and could very likely have a higher overclocking potential than retail parts "
Live - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I really liked this article. Covered everything needed and was very informative.GeorgeH - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Interesting read, but I was a bit disappointed not to see the 4850x2 included in the benchmarks. The 1GB model is currently at very rough price parity with the 4890 and the 2GB model still cheaper than a 285. As such, it would've been nice to be able to more easily note the advantages of a multiple GPU card over a single GPU card cranked up to ludicrous speed.Minion4Hire - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
The numbers used for the 4850 in this article correlate to those in the Multi-GPU article from February. So all you really need to do is compare the 4850 X2 results from that article to the 4890 results in this article. The two are closely matched, although I'd be willing to bet that the perceived performance and fps range is tighter and more consistent on the 4890 than the 4850 X2, as single GPU solutions usually are.Tuvok86 - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
You'd better undervolt rather than underclocking.My 4890 manages a good downvolt at stock speed, resulting in low temps
kmmatney - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
That is a good point. I have setup a 2D profile in ATT which undervolts the card (you can undervolt, but not overvolt with ATT) and that does help in 2D. I haven't tried undervolting at stock speed (although mine's a OC version, so it may need the full voltage).kmmatney - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I have an HD4890 and it does overclock well. But it's just too damn loud. I've been actually underclocking it for most of my games, as its fast enough to run them fine while underclocked, and it keeps the noise down. It's just not fun running it overclocked and having your game drowned out by a hairdryer. Headphones help.Veteran - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
The title is a little bit stupid if you ask me, a 4890 can go way further then 1GHz on the core and 1.2GHz for the RAM. Why didn't AT go further then normal achievable clocks? The title says to the max, too bad it cannot make up the promise.Interesting read though, must have cost a tremendous amount of work.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Well ... it is to the maximum value the built-in overclocking features of the driver will let you set the card. So that's where "to the max" came from.Yes with 3rd party tools you can get higher on some hardware, but we didn't want to go into aftermarket cooling and not everyone can even make it to 1GHz ... We wanted this based somewhere in achievability.
And I'm glad it was interesting :-)