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
The New $250 Price Point: Radeon HD 4890 vs. GeForce GTX 275
Here it is, what you've all been waiting for. And it's a tie. Pretty much. These cards stay pretty close in performance across the board.
Looking at Age of Conan, we see something we didn't expect. NVIDIA is actually performing on par with AMD in this benchmark. NVIDIA's come a long way to closing the gap in this one, and for this comparison it's paid off a bit. Despite the fact that this one is essentially a tie, NVIDIA gets props for being competitive here.
While NVIDIA usually owns Call of Duty benchmarks, the 4890 outpaces the GTX 275 at 16x10 and 19x12 while the GTX 275 leads at the 30" panel resolution. As long as its still playable, then this isn't a huge deal, but the fact that most people have lower resolution monitors who might want one of these GPUs isn't in NVIDIA's favor.
Crysis Warhead is really close in performance again.
AMD leads Fallout 3, and this is the first game we've seen any consistent significant difference favoring one card over another.
FarCry 2 takes us back to the norm with both cards performing essentially the same.
The 4890 does have a pretty hefty lead under Race Driver GRID. The gap does close at higher resolution, but it's still a gap in AMD's favor.
Left4Dead is also pretty much a tie with the card you would want changing depending on the resolution of your monitor.
Overall, this is really a wash. These parts are very close in performance and very competitive.
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Snarks - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
One is an open, one is not.Jesus christ.
The fact you have to pay extra on top of the card prices to use these features is a no go. You start to lose value, thus negating the effect these "features" have.
p.s ATI have similar features to nvidia, what they have is nothing new.
SiliconDoc - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
Did you see a charge for ambient occlusion ?Here you are "clucky clucky cluck cluck !"
Red rooster, the LIARS crew.
SiliconDoc - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
One ? I count for or five. I never had to pay extra outside card cost for PhysX, did you ?You see, you people will just lie your yappers off.
Yeah ati has PhysX - it's own. ROFLMAO
Look, just jump around and cluck and flap the rooster wings and eat some chickseed, you all can believe eachothers LIES. Have a happy lie fest, dude.
bill3 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Personally while you bring up good points I'd much, much, MUCH rather have the thorough explanation of CUDA and PHYSX and the relevance thereof, they gave us than power, heat and overclocking numbers you can get at dozens of other reviews. The former is insight, the latter just legwork.joos2000 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I really like to soft shadows you get in the corners with the new AO features in nVidia's drivers. Very neat.dryloch - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I had a 4850 that I bought at launch. I was very excited when ATI released their Video Convertor app. I spent days trying to make that produce watchable video. Then I realized that every website that tested it had the same result. They released a broken POS and have yet to fix it. I did not appreciate them treating me like that so when I replaced the card I switched out to Nvidia. I have gone back and forth but this time I think I will stick with Nvidia for a while.duploxxx - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
and by buying Nvidia you already knew that you didn't have POS so in the end you have the same result, except for the fact that the 48xx series really had a true performance advantage with that price range so your rebranded replacement just gave you 1) additional cost and 2) really 0 added value, so your grass is a bit to green.....Exar3342 - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
"0 added value"? Really? He didn't have a GPU video converter that worked on his ATI card, and now he DOES have a working program with his Nvidia card. Sounds like added value to me. He gets the same performance, pretty much the same price, and working software. Not a bad deal...z3R0C00L - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
The GPU converted that comes with nVIDIA is horrible (better than ATi's though).I use Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra which supports both CUDA and Stream. Worth mentioning that Stream is faster.
Spoelie - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Is the 30$ pricetag of badaboom included in the "pretty much the same price"? If it isn't, then actually there is no added value. You have a converter (value, well only if your goal is to put video's on your ipod and it's worth 30$ to you to do it faster) but you have to pay for it extra. The only thing the nvidia card provides is the ability to accelerate that program, you don't actually get the program.