HIS Radeon HD 4890 Turbo Edition

Apr. 13, 2009 by Lawrence Lee

ATI's recently dropped on their fastest single GPU graphics card, the HD 4870 to $149 and $199 for the 512MB and 1GB versions respectively. Their manufacturer partners resisted the change, however, party due to decreased demand, but also because the 4870 was already at a good price/position against nVidia's rival part, the GTX 260. The release of ATI's newest GPU, the HD 4890, may push them in line, lest the close pricing of the 4870 and the 4890 causes them to cannibalize sales from one another.

Though early reports suggested the HD 4890 would simply be an overclocked HD 4870, this turned out not to be completely true. The 4890's RV790 core is an updated/tweaked version of the 4870's RV770. The main difference is a set of decoupling capacitors around the outside of the chip which results in a 10% increase in physical surface area. This gives it the ability to handle more voltage allowing for higher clock speeds. Timing and power distribution has also been tweaked. Other changes include an increase of 100 MHz core clock speed, 75 MHz GDDR5 frequency, and a 30W higher power envelope. Our HD 4890 sample is a "Turbo" edition made by HIS. It has a core clock speed of 900 MHz, 50 MHz higher than reference — several manufacturers have put out similar factory overclocked 4890s.

Strangely, our sample came with no adapters or cables, but a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. According to most e-tailers, the retail version ships with adapters for VGA and HDMI connectivity, a 6-pin power adapter, a CrossFire bridge and no free games.

HIS Radeon HD 4890 Turbo Edition: Specifications (from the product web page)

The specifications list the card's memory as being clocked at 1000 MHz (4000 MHz effective). According to the GPU-Z, our sample's memory was running at 975 MHz.