GIGABYTE GV-R489-1GH-B Radeon HD 4890 Video Card Review

Overclocking

Overclocking may be the one saving grace of the HD 4890. So far the GIGABYTE GV-R489-1GH-B Radeon HD 4890 video card that we have been sent to review has been matched evenly with the overclocked ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP! Edition found in my main rig. However the HD 4890 appears to be quite the tweaker’s card.

ATI’s Overdrive software makes for very easy overclocking, and the results you see above were simply achieved with the the Auto Tune feature. That’s right! I managed this performance increase with just the automatic overclocking tool. With some finesse and a little luck, I’m sure 1GHz GPU core would be achievable on these cards. That and a few more MHz out of the memory clock, and you should be pushing into the performance territory of the GeForce GTX 275 that NVIDIA recently released.

I should note that this was all done with stock cooling. It would be interesting to see what one could do with an after-market cooler or something from the likes of CoolIT.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Like any new video card release, I approached the release of the Radeon HD 4890 and the subsequent GIGABYTE GV-R489-1GH-B Radeon HD 4890 video card with cautious optimism and excitement. New video cards are always interesting in their own right, as they are a full of unspoiled potential. They probably sit on the same level as CPUs for the amount of excitement and intrigue they can generate. Now that I’ve had some time with this card, I’m not sure where exactly I stand.

The GIGABYTE HD 4890 is a competent card, and it is the fastest single GPU card in ATI’s stable. That is important if you are dedicated to using ATI hardware, or locked into their architecture due to motherboard and chipset choice. As we just discussed, the card is remarkably tweakable. It even beats out the GTX 260, only being bested by a factory overclocked version in a few of our benchmarks.

Things start to get muddy when you start to consider the price of these cards and how they correlate to their performance. The GIGABYTE GV-R489-1GH-B is a full $60 USD more expensive then the equivalent of the NVIDIA GTX 260 board used for comparison. It’s actually closer to the price of the GTX 275. Now the GIGABYTE card does come with some huge overclocking overhead, and should come close to GTX 275 in performance. That still requires manual tweaking. The card does come with some nice features, but this price comparison is hard to ignore. I mean, if they even managed to throw in a couple games you could balance the cost.

In the end, the GIGABYTE GV-R489-1GH-B Radeon HD 4890 video card is a good start. It’s a welcome entry to the ATI family, and can scratch the tweaking itch of many an overclocker out there. If GIGABYTE can start releasing super-clocked versions at the same price point, I will be remarkably impressed. As it stands now, this card gets a high rating for it’s wonderful performance, but loses some points and an award for it’s price to performance comparison to competing hardware.

Pros