ATI Radeon HD 4890 vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on April 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
NVIDIA is competitive at this new price point of $250 depending on what resolution you look at. We also see some improvement from NVIDIA's new 185 series driver and get a new feature to play with in the form of Ambient Occlusion. We did look at PhysX and CUDA again, and, while we may be interested in what is made possible by them, there is still a stark lack of compelling content that takes advantage of these technologies. We can't recommend prioritizing PhysX and CUDA over performance, and performance is where a GPU needs to compete. Luckily for NVIDIA, the GTX 275 does.
The fact that its worst-case performance is still better than the GTX 260 core 216 and in the best case, it can hit that of the GTX 280 was a plus for the GTX 275. It often posted performance more in line with its bigger brothers than a $50+ cheaper part. This is pretty sweet for a $250 card, especially as many games these days rely very heavily on shader performance. The GeForce GTX 275 is a good fit for this price point, and is a good option. But then there's the Radeon HD 4890.
The 4890, basically a tweaked and overclocked 4870, does improve performance over the 4870 1GB and puts up good competition for the GTX 275. On a pure performance level the 4890 and GTX 275 trade blows at different resolutions. The 4890 tends to look better at lower resolutions while the GTX 275 is more competitive at high resolutions. At 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 the 4890 is nearly undefeated. At 2560 x 1600, it seems to be pretty much a wash between the two cards.
At the same time, there are other questions, like that of availability. With these parts performing so similarly, and price being pretty well equal, the fact that AMD parts can be bought starting today and we have to wait for the NVIDIA parts is an advantage for AMD. However, we have to factor in the fact that AMD driver support doesn't have the best track record as of late for new game titles. Add in the fact that NVIDIA's developer relations seem more effective than AMD's could mean more titles that run better on NVIDIA hardware in the future. So what to go with? Really it depends on what resolutions you're targeting and what the prices end up being. If you've got a 30" display then either card will work, it's just up to your preference and the items we talked about earlier. If you've got a 24" or smaller display (1920x1200 or below), then the Radeon HD 4890 is the card for you.
AMD tells us that most retailers will feature mail in rebates of $20, a program which was apparently underwritten by AMD. Could AMD have worried they weren't coming in at high enough performance late in the game and decided to try and throw an extra incentive in there? Either way, not everyone likes a mail in rebate. I much prefer the instant variety and mail-in-rebate offers do not make decisions for me. We still compare products based on their MSRP (which is likely the price they'll be back at once the rebate goes away). This is true for both AMD and NVIDIA parts.
There will also be overclocked variants of the GTX 275 to compete with the overclocked variants from AMD. The overclock on the AMD hardware is fairly modest, but does make a difference and the same holds true for the GTX 275 products in early testing. We'll have to take a look at how such parts compare in the future along with SLI and CrossFire. In the meantime, we have another interesting battle at the $250 price point.
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san1s - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
why didn't you post a page on how useless dx 10.1 is? I bet that there will be even less difference in gameplay with dx10.1 on compared to dx10 than physxAnandThenMan - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
10.1 can bring some meaningful performance boosts.http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1757/hd489064.jpg">http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1757/hd489064.jpg
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
ati can't do physx at all - so uhh, no performance boost there, EVER.Same with cuda.
Kinda likewise with this cool Vreveal clean up video thingie.
Same with the badaboom converter compared to ati's err(non mentioned terrible implementation)...lol hush hush!!! doesn't matter ! doesn't matter ! nothing going on there !
tamalero - Thursday, April 9, 2009 - link
hu, gpu phsyx gpu aceleration only helps when theres heavy physx caltulations.almost no game uses that heavy calculations nowadays.
besides, if you wanted physix to run, dont you need a second card to run physX while the other does the graphics?
I suspect thers a slowdown as well if the same graphic card does the work.
SiliconDoc - Friday, April 24, 2009 - link
Since you suspect there's a slowdown with PhysX enabled it points out two things to me : 1. you have no clue if there is because you don't have an nvidia card, indicating your red rooster issue.2. That's why you didn't get my point when the other poster linked to the other review and listed the various settings and I laughed while pointing out the NV said PhysX enabled.
_______
It's funny how your brain farts at just the wrong time, and you expose your massive experience weakness:
"you suspect" - you don't know.
Go whine at someone else, or don't at all. At least bring a peashooter to the gunfight.
Ever played War Monger or Mirror's Edge ? lol
No of course not! YOU CAN'T, until, you know.
yacoub - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Given that you label the price for the GTX260-216 as $205, and in reality it's closer to $175, can we expect the 275 will be closer to $215 in short order?yacoub - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Of course ATi has a hard launch of this product - its hardware appears from your description to be identical to existing hardware just with a slight clockspeed boost, where as the GTX-275 is actually a break between the 285 and the 260.Also the 275 is much more appealing given that it has actual hardware improvements over the 260 for just a bit more cash.
chrnochime - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Did you actually bothered to read other comments wrt the fact that the RV790 is a respin, not just bump in gpu/mem clkspeed??And the actual hardware improvements that are just cut-down from the GTX295. Big deal. Appealing to the NV fanboys, sure.
7Enigma - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
It's possible he saw the article before Anand/Gary corrected the table. Originally the table had identical numbers between the 4870 and 4890. And in the text they mentioned that it was basically an OC'd 4870. This could lead one to assume it was pretty much the same card. In the article (on the next page) they did mention quickly the high transistor count, but it was brushed over quickly and they didn't really go into detail about the differences (still waiting to get a response about the cooling solution changes).As for the rest of his post, he IS clearly an Nvidia fanboy, because the 4890 is clearly the better product in just about every case (not even looking at the OC'ing potential which seems to be very nice).
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Hmm, better in every case, without the overclocking potential ? lol He's a fanboy ?Is it better with Cuda, curing cancer with Folding, Vreveal clean up video recoding, forced game profiles, dual GPU game forcing ? Any of those have an as good equivalent ? NO NOT ONE.
So you know dude, he's not the fanboy...
The thing is, ati did a good job with the ring around the gpu 3m transistors to cut down frazzly electric - and gain a good overclock.
That they did well. They also added capacitors and voltage management to the card - an expense left - not mentioned in expense terms - including the larger die cost.
So, on the one hand we have a rebranded overclock that merely used the same type of core reworking that goes into a shrink, but optimized for clocks with a transistor band around the outside.
Not a core rework, but a very good refinement.
I knew the intricacies would be wailed about by the red fans, but not a one is going to note that the G80 is NOT the same as the G92b - the refinements happened there as well in the die shrink, and in between, just like they do on cpu revisions.
Since ATI was making and overclocking upgrade, they needed to ring the core - and make whatever rearrangements were neccessary to do that.
Purely rebrand ? Ahh, not really, but downclocking it to the old numbers may (likely) reveal it's identical anyway.
At that point rebrand is tough to get away from, since the nvidia rebrands offered core revision and memory/clock differences, as well.
I'll give ati a very slight edge because of the ring capacitors, which is interesting, and may be due to the ddr5, that made their core viable for competition to begin with, instead of just a 9800X equivalent, the 4850 - minus the extra capabilities - cuda, better folding, physx, forced sli, game profiles - etc... vreveal... and on and on - evga game drivers on release day - etc. - oh the uhh.. ambient occlusion and fear + many other game mods for it...
Anyway, tell me none of that matters with a straight face - and that face will be so red you'll have to pay in wampum at the puter store.