# Sapphire HD 4890 1 GB GDDR5



## W1zzard (Mar 30, 2009)

Sapphire's new HD 4890 comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and yet unseen clock speeds offering much better performance at a competitive price. Will that be enough to beat NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 275 ?

*Show full review*


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## Steevo (Apr 2, 2009)

Any possible way we could see GTA4 .....please.....please....please


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## wolf2009 (Apr 2, 2009)

good review as always, love your board components analysis and OC and power consumption section. 

could you please add info about how you bench these games , like Clear sky has a benchmark , do you use that or how else do you bench ? and other games too. thank you


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## mlee49 (Apr 2, 2009)

wow what a loud card.


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## DaJMasta (Apr 2, 2009)

The idle power consumption is alarming....  Not sure why it is so high, especially when the GTX260 is well above it under load.


Perhaps the high idle power consumption is linked to the idle fan speed, which may be calibrated for dust-ridden poorly ventilated cases, to avoid problems that some have with overheating.


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## DaMulta (Apr 2, 2009)

So it's about 10 frames a sec faster on most games avg.

If I took that review right, and really doesn't eat that much more voltage over the 70.

A few of the games the difference was way off, and that to me looked like driver bugs more than it being that much more powerful of a card. IDK if I am wrong about that or not.


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## largon (Apr 2, 2009)

Curiously, TPU's sample is "only" 850MHz and in all scenarios it - or rather, _the whole rig_ - consumed more or around equal amount of power than a HD4870. 
Now, xbitlabs has a 900MHz sample and here's what they found when they measured the card's consumption (card only): 





HD4890 @ 900MHz consumed significantly less power than HD4870, in all scenarios. 



> The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Qimonda and carry the model number IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X. With *a latency of 1.0 ns*, they are specified to run at 1000 MHz.


1.0ns is the cycle time of the chip, not a latency. 


> This is AMD's new RV790 GPU. It is made in a 55 nm process at TSMC Taiwan with *956 million transistors*. Please note that the die size is slightly increased from the RV770, the exact reason for that is unknown.


RV790 has 959 million transistors. 


> AMD has put two VT1165 voltage controllers on their cards. One is responsible for the VGPU core voltage and the second one controls the memory voltage.


Memory vDD is 1 phase, vDDQ is also 1 phase. vGPU is 3 phases (CPL). 
What are those 2 phases for (that with the Pulse inductor pack)? And what controls them?


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## ZoneDymo (Apr 2, 2009)

Please add Assasins Creed and GTA 4 to the benchmarks.

(and maybe Take out Prey)


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## adrianx (Apr 2, 2009)

at the end...


like a PLUS you can add the "possible" support for HAVOC


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## WarEagleAU (Apr 2, 2009)

Awesome review, but you did get lucky with this sample, just not the power color one.


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## js01 (Apr 2, 2009)

In another review of an asus card they hit 990mhz core so maybe the asus cards are the ones to get.


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## nafets (Apr 2, 2009)

Any chance of some GPU-Z pics (Sensor Tab) which show the VDDC during 2D and 3D states? I'm interested in how aggressive the BIOSes on these cards are set, with regards to voltage. That's the only way I can figure these HD4890s are using less power in 2D IDLE than comparable HD4870 512MB/1GB cards...


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## Yukikaze (Apr 2, 2009)

Great review as always (Wizz's ones are a long time favorite of mine for readability and comprehensiveness).

What I am missing here, however, are the results of the HD4870 1Gb version.


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## Scrizz (Apr 2, 2009)

another fine review by the wizz


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## Binge (Apr 2, 2009)

Interesting.  I would have liked to see a preview of the volt-mod software, but thorough as always.  I want to know how W1z gets those scores in 06 with a 295 lol


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## wolf (Apr 2, 2009)

excellent review W1z, as always. pity it doesn't bring more to the table, and a pity your samples didnt overclock so well.

A lesson to be learned, don't buy a 4890 EXPECTING 1ghz core, you may be disappointed, maybe not but its a gamble.


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## mdm-adph (Apr 2, 2009)

I'm just shocked that 4890's now run Crysis better than GTX 285's.  The world has been stood on its head.


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## Particle (Apr 2, 2009)

Didn't AMD directly state that the shaders have been optimized for increased efficiency?  As such, I'm not sure why the review claims nothing other than clock speed has changed and completely dismisses the increased die size.  This is clearly not the same chip.


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## W1zzard (Apr 2, 2009)

Particle said:


> Didn't AMD directly state that the shaders have been optimized for increased efficiency?  As such, I'm not sure why the review claims nothing other than clock speed has changed and completely dismisses the increased die size.  This is clearly not the same chip.



source?


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## Particle (Apr 2, 2009)

I saw it on XS before it went down.  When it comes back online it should still be there.  Proof aside (for the moment), we do know the pinout changed and the die size increased, so the shaders being changed does make sense.  In any case, these are all changes that warrant a label of "something changed".


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## Mega-Japan (Apr 2, 2009)

Just looked at comparison, and I honestly expected the 4890 to do much better (or perhaps it is just this particular card?), most of the GTX series beat it by quite a gap at most games, and even its own predecessor, the 4870 1Gb still beats it at some other...

I'd like to see reviews for other manufacturers and see if it makes any difference (specially HIS/ASUS).

Awesome review btw.


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## W1zzard (Apr 2, 2009)

Particle said:


> I saw it on XS before it went down.  When it comes back online it should still be there.  Proof aside (for the moment), we do know the pinout changed and the die size increased, so the shaders being changed does make sense.  In any case, these are all changes that warrant a label of "something changed".








nope, no such changes that you speak of


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## wolf2009 (Apr 2, 2009)

^^ does Fudzilla count as source ? 

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12677&Itemid=1

also there is something about RV790 using burst cache or read which was used in RV710 and RV740


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## Braveheart (Apr 2, 2009)

glad i got my 4870x2 when i did...this is not enough of a performance gain if i had waited.


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## dalekdukesboy (Apr 2, 2009)

AM I the only one who is somewhat underwhelmed at this card? I mean I know it's an improvement and it's fairly inexpensive and yes it puts out good numbers but seems to eat a fairly high amount of juice for what it does and overall  a gtx 275/280/285 seems the better bang for the buck/efficient especially if you're a smart shopper online...


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## largon (Apr 2, 2009)

Dunno how the prices are where you are, but over here GTX280/285 is 1/3 more expensive. And GTX275 draws *loads* more power than HD4890.


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## dalekdukesboy (Apr 2, 2009)

I can get a gtx 280 for 250 if I was up for it, and the overclocked zotac gtx 285 for 350...the gtx 275 is actually supposed to be around 250 when it launches here and the 4890 also is around 250...and I'm slightly suspicious of the power draw #'s on some sites for the 275 for they have been very inconsistent and the 4890 uses a fair amount itself and quite a bit at idle which makes sense the 4000 series was infamous for that very same reason.


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## RoutedScripter (Apr 2, 2009)

The only thing i find weird is the fan noise trend which blow up in these last years , more and more people get PCs and I would say , those who can't bare the little sound from the fan noise are beginners to the whole PC world , or otherwise those have any possible other reason?

I got my first pc at 7 age , they were quite loud for how low they were , didn't bother me at all , never thought of that , so I am use to it that much , i bought a new pc less than year ago(my third)  right after it booted up the first thing I noticed it was WAY too quiet and I really thought something's not right. 

So i got Xp's up and pretty much without doubt straight maxing all graphics settings out , 1 hour later  in some game, screen freezes with a terrible corruption , so I reset it , ... hmmm then it happens again , until third time i found out it was at 85C. omg.

So again, I said to my self, "who the heck cares about the damn noise , let me play my game normal at least"   ... that's actually built into hardware these days , and i don't like to fans being so quiet anyways, I set the fan to 30% in HD4870 when i go to sleep, then if I forget to turn it to 40% in the morning I feel dizzy and like something's missing , something's too quiet...  lol

40% fan also keeps all my games below 60C at all times.


So nope , i won't change fans for water cool even for free, i need NOISE

(or i would keep those fans running for nothing basically)


Other than that, that's a great review and another + for ATI/AMD  
People just get use to it and stop crying


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## nafets (Apr 2, 2009)

Taken from Tomshardware HD4890 review;






The above results show that there weren't any performance optimizations done to the RV790 core compared to the RV770 core. The changes done were mainly to "support higher clocks speeds" as shown in Wiz's big pic...


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## ArmoredCavalry (Apr 2, 2009)

mdm-adph said:


> I'm just shocked that 4890's now run Crysis better than GTX 285's.  The world has been stood on its head.



Yeah but who cares.  This coming from an ATI owner.

Seriously though, if you buy a card because of how well it performs in Crysis. 

Any, as for the review, this is about what I expected from the 4890, nothing crazy enough to make me want to upgrade from the 4870 (yet anyway).

They are priced to sell, I will say that. Also lol@newegg review:


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## HTC (Apr 3, 2009)

I find the results very puzzling (i'm referring to the nVidia cards performance): i thought the higher the number, the better the performance but, in some games and @ some resolutions, i see the lower numbered cards beating the higher ones. I must admit: i'm not too familiar with nVidia cards, though.

As for the 4890, i find that idle power consumption to be far too much, even if it's load power usage isn't as high as i feared. Remember: the PC's @ idle most of the time so it's in your interest to have a lower idle power usage, while still having a powerful card, under load.


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## nafets (Apr 3, 2009)

ArmoredCavalry said:


> ...Also lol@newegg review:
> 
> Pic of idiot Newegg review



I'm surprised that genius could even get his PC case open, if he even actually has the card...



HTC said:


> ...As for the 4890, i find that idle power consumption to be far too much, even if it's load power usage isn't as high as i feared. Remember: the PC's @ idle most of the time so it's in your interest to have a lower idle power usage, while still having a powerful card, under load.



As with the HD4870, ATI still hasn't figured out how to properly downclock the GDDR5 memory, while avoiding the flickering/shaking that results from it. This single problem is what is holding back the HD4870/90 in the IDLE power consumption department. An easy fix would be to disable PowerPlay and enable driver-based state switching (like the HD4870X2), but for some reason ATI isn't doing that.

The HD4870/90 can be excellent power misers in 2D IDLE (even better than the GTX200 series), but the user has to do a little legwork to get there, via proper GPU/MEM underclocking and undervolting. But not everyone is up for that. Most people just want a "plug and play" solution that works, and does the above mentioned automatically. ATI isn't quite there yet though...


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## ArmoredCavalry (Apr 3, 2009)

nafets said:


> I'm surprised that genius could even get his PC case open, if he even actually has the card...





yeah, 30 seconds after I made the post, I showed my friend the review, he had to vote it helpful of course.


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## bigtye (Apr 3, 2009)

Enjoyed the review. Thank you very much. Happy to stay with my 4870 for now, based on the small enough gap between them.

Tye

PS on a side note, spelling error on last page of the review titled "value and conclusion"

_So why is the card twice as load?_

Should be "loud".
Don't mean to be rude by pointing it out, someone was obviously very tired by the time they finished all 3 reviews.


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## iandh (Apr 3, 2009)

Man, the noise thing is nearly a dealbreaker for me.


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## nafets (Apr 3, 2009)

iandh said:


> Man, the noise thing is nearly a dealbreaker for me.



The fan can and will certainly be adjustable by the user, just as with previous HD48xx series cards...


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## iandh (Apr 3, 2009)

nafets said:


> The fan can and will certainly be adjustable by the user, just as with previous HD48xx series cards...



I understand that, but I like using the built in profiles because I don't have to open CCC every time I want to game just to set the fan. What bothers me about his is how much higher the idle fan noise is. I don't mind the load noise because I game with headphones.


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## nafets (Apr 3, 2009)

In comparison with the HD4850/70, ATI obviously recommended HD4890 BIOS fan settings more in favor of cooling performance rather than noise output this time around.

Chalk it up to either complaints from end users with "hot running" cards or because ATI knows end users will most likely be taking advantage of the HD4890s apparant OC'ability.

I'm sure as third party software development expands to support the HD4890, changing the default BIOS fan settings shouldn't be too hard for someone with a little time on their hands.

The HD4850/70 cards were far from perfect in many aspects, but with time, solutions to many of the original problems/complaints were found and applied. I suspect the HD4890 will have that same "breaking in" process.

Not to mention, I'm sure there will be many manufacturers soon releasing reference and non-reference PCB designs with improved cooling units. It just takes time...


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## Kovoet (Jun 2, 2009)

Installed this in my sons case and swapped it for the GTS8800 512mb XFx and to be honest the sounds are about the same unless my hearing is bad.

He plays Joint operations at 1024x768 so this is just perfect for him.

I'm not biased at all but really impressed with ths card and read a lot of reviews before purchasing this card.


Price wise for this card is the thing that really did it for me. Instead of getting him the GTX285 I got him this card plus 4gb ram Ocz reaper PC8500 for the same price.

I am using the ATI4870x2 after always favouring the nVidia cards but thought I would give the ATi's a go.

I think the only difference is when you play Crysis but how many of us play it.


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