ATI Radeon HD 4890 launched at $250 with improved GPU
Saturday 11th April 2009, 11:30:00 AM, written by Rys
ATI have unveiled a new high-end Radeon aimed at the performance crowd, powered by an improved GPU and available at a keen price. RV790 is under the hood, and while it shares logical operation with RV770 -- so the same unit and cycle counts, cache sizes and heirarchies, buses, etc -- it's been comprehensively reengineered so that the hardware can reach higher frequencies.
The reengineering is focussed on letting the chip take a higher voltage than RV770, which combined with improvements in the chips power planes and cross-chip clocking, lets it operate at higher frequencies. It's a bigger chip by 11%, but only contains a smattering more logic (ATI say another 3 million transistors, taking it to 959 million), with the rest of the area taken up by hardware for the improvements to the chip's power distribution.
The resulting Radeon HD 4890 comes clocked at what appears to be a conservative 850MHz, and has a standard 1 GiB of GDDR5 at an effective 3.9 GHz. There's also a SKU dubbed the Radeon HD 4890 OC, which means a chip with a stock base frequency of 900MHz or more.
Given the chip's larger size, ATI will only use it in higher-margin products like the 4890, so don't expect cheaper 48xx models to gain the GPU, at least not any time soon. No word on how many RV790 wafers ATI are starting with TSMC. No word on an X2, either, because of the higher power draw of a high-clocked RV790 (board power for HD 4890 is ~190W peak).
Performance for the $250 asking price is fairly staggering, with the product offering more raw graphics performance at the asking price than anything that's come before it, from ATI or NVIDIA. There's nothing else to say really. There are more expensive boards out there with higher performance, but if $250 or so is your cost ceiling for a new board then the HD 4890 is a fairly compelling proposition. Whether or not you choose it really depends on software, because the hardware is excellent.
If there are any physical downsides, they appear to be a slightly noisy stock cooler and high load power draw.
The Tech Report, as always, has figured the HD 4890 comprehensively. Look at Scott's analysis if you want more numbers and excellent commentary, including a look at overclocking. Nearly 1GHz on the stock cooler was had, which is pretty epic when you consider what that clock is driving.
The reengineering is focussed on letting the chip take a higher voltage than RV770, which combined with improvements in the chips power planes and cross-chip clocking, lets it operate at higher frequencies. It's a bigger chip by 11%, but only contains a smattering more logic (ATI say another 3 million transistors, taking it to 959 million), with the rest of the area taken up by hardware for the improvements to the chip's power distribution.
The resulting Radeon HD 4890 comes clocked at what appears to be a conservative 850MHz, and has a standard 1 GiB of GDDR5 at an effective 3.9 GHz. There's also a SKU dubbed the Radeon HD 4890 OC, which means a chip with a stock base frequency of 900MHz or more.
Given the chip's larger size, ATI will only use it in higher-margin products like the 4890, so don't expect cheaper 48xx models to gain the GPU, at least not any time soon. No word on how many RV790 wafers ATI are starting with TSMC. No word on an X2, either, because of the higher power draw of a high-clocked RV790 (board power for HD 4890 is ~190W peak).
Performance for the $250 asking price is fairly staggering, with the product offering more raw graphics performance at the asking price than anything that's come before it, from ATI or NVIDIA. There's nothing else to say really. There are more expensive boards out there with higher performance, but if $250 or so is your cost ceiling for a new board then the HD 4890 is a fairly compelling proposition. Whether or not you choose it really depends on software, because the hardware is excellent.
If there are any physical downsides, they appear to be a slightly noisy stock cooler and high load power draw.
The Tech Report, as always, has figured the HD 4890 comprehensively. Look at Scott's analysis if you want more numbers and excellent commentary, including a look at overclocking. Nearly 1GHz on the stock cooler was had, which is pretty epic when you consider what that clock is driving.
Tagging
ati ± radeon, hd, 4890, rv790
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