The XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX is factory overclocked with a GPU clock of 900MHz and a memory clock of 3900MHz. The card features 1024MB of GDDR5 RAM and a 256-bit memory bus. Cooling for the card is with a fansink and the card includes a pair of dual-link DVI inputs and a HDTV breakout box. CrossFireX is supported along with ATI Stream Technology, and ATI Avivo HD. The card measures 9.5 x 4.376 x 3.8-inches and is packaged with the new Tom Clancy HAWX video game.
Key features of the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX include DirectX 10.1 support, 24x CFAA and anisotropic filtering, quad GPU support, physics processing capability, and integrated HDMI with 7.1 surround sound built-in.
The test machine I am using for the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX review is an AMD based Dragon platform machine with the following specifications:
- CPU: AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition
- RAM 2GB
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H
- PSU: Pc Power & Cooling 750W
To test the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX I will be using 3DMark Vantage and a couple of my favorite video games including the original Crysis and Call of Duty: World at War. The first test up is 3DMark Vantage.
I ran 3DMark Vantage to test the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX with all settings in the ATI control panel at default and the settings in 3DMark Vantage at default levels. The results were as follows:
- 3DMarks: P10211
- GPU Score: 10241
- CPU: 10121
- GPU1: 29.53
- GPU2: 30.49
- CPU1: 1296.26 Plans/s
- CPU2: 16.04 steps
- Feature1: 936GTexels/s
- F2: 6.08 GPixels/s
- F3: 28.24 fps
- F4: 25.46 fps
- F5: 45.41 fps
- F6: 63.69 fps
I really like Crysis despite the fact that it has been on the market for over a year now. The game is very graphically demanding and still makes some of the brand new games on the market look old by comparison. To test the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX I used Fraps to record frame rates while playing a single player level from the original beach insertion until the battle with the first enemy soldiers was over. I used a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 with 2x AA and all settings on medium. Fraps recorded the following frame rate data:
- Min: 35 fps
- Avg: 59.431 fps
- Max: 90 fps
The latest title in the Call of Duty franchise is World at War. The game goes back to the WWII roots of the Call of Duty series and offers great graphics and fun game play. I again used Fraps to record frame rate data starting at the original beach mission right after being saved from the enemy solider. I ran the game at 1920 x 1200 with 4x AA, and shadows, specular maps, ocean simulation, dynamic foliage, and bullet impacts all turned on. Fraps recorded the following frame rate data:
- Min: 44 fps
- Avg: 68.738 fps
- Max: 94 fps
After the testing was done the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX turned in some very good performance numbers. The card carries a very slight price premium over stock clocked HD4890 video cards. I haven't tested a stock HD 4890 so I can’t say how much better the performance of the XXX version is compared to a stock card, but at a minimal price difference, the extra performance is hard to pass up. The only thing I can really say bad about the video card is that it plain refused to work in my 790i Ultra Intel-based test machine. It did fire right up in the AMD-based machine I tested with though. The problem was probable due to incomplete driver removal for the NVIDIA display driver on the other test machine, just be warned you may need a full reformat if your gaming rig is similar to my Intel machine.
