The 4890 should be quite a bit more powerful no? Price not an issue, which card is more powerful and by how much. As far as I know the 4890 should blow the 9800GTX+ (rebadged GTS 250) away, with ease.

Exact cards are BFG 9800GTX+ 1GB OC (the OC is like 12mhz on the core clock, very tiny, nothing) and the other is the XFX Radeon 4890 1GB.

So far I'm testing the two, the 4890 is much better in more demanding games, in several there's very little difference (this is definitely a cpu bottleneck, old x2 cpu), and in one game the Nv card is a full 15% faster than the 4890, ETQW... I think it's a matter of drivers, and that the 4890 truly is a powerhouse like the numbers and benchmarks show...I mean isn't it more compared to GTX cards rather than a 9800GTX+/GTS 250?

Edit: This will be a gift for my bro who'll want to run the newest games with all the eye candy cranked at 1680x1050. Rest of system is an Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Edition 3.2Ghz, 4GB DDR2 800mhz dual channel/ and either of these Gpu's, so what's up? Look me out here... Because I'm also considering the 4890 supports DX10.1 and Shader Model 4.1, which has shown huge performance improvements over standard DX10. I actually saw this for myself in Stalker Clear Sky, which supports 10.1, and when enabled it's like 20% faster.

Bump, just one tho promise.

Nobody has an opinion or any experience with these two cards, or at least the 4890? Shouldn't it be much better, especially in DX games? So far my DX games run great on the 4890, while opengl games suffer 10-15% loss in frame rate.

The 4890 should be better in most games. However, not all games are written in the same way, you have to understand that some games are written to favour Nvidia cards, and other games are written to favour ATI cards (due to business practices mostly, like ATI or Nvidia paying companies to make their games run better on their cards). Not all games are like this, but there are some out there that will run better on the Nvidia card than the ATI card, and you can't do anything about it. The 4890 is better in most, so I would conclude it's the better card.

If price is no object I would get the 5870 though, it's much much better than the 4890.

4890 will be definately faster. Even 4850 is much faster than 9800gtx+

Yup...

Thanks much guys, made the upgrade, and also changed over half my main PC to Radeon as well, it's been years since I ran ATI, I hope the drivers are half as good as they were then

I considered the 5870, well severeal 5000 series, but the deal I got on the 4890's was insane, I bought 5 lol...But I sold the GTX 295's that's why, with $ left over got the board and DDR3 memory I wanted and really really needed.

Quote from hazaky :

4890 will be definately faster. Even 4850 is much faster than 9800gtx+

Wrong, 4850 is slower than 9800GTX+. 4870 is ~same. 4890 is much faster.

Quote from Shadowww :

Wrong, 4850 is slower than 9800GTX+. 4870 is ~same. 4890 is much faster.

Om wut, my 4870 pwned GTX275 bigtime.

9800 cards are almost the same as 8800 ... a bit better chipset on updated base.

Quote from hazaky :

Om wut, my 4870 pwned GTX275 bigtime.

It wouldn't if GTX275 would have same CPU

Quote :

9800 cards are almost the same as 8800 ... a bit better chipset on updated base.

Yeah, but difference between *800GT and *800GTX+ is almost as huge as difference between *500GT and *800GT.

Quote from Shadowww :

It wouldn't if GTX275 would have same CPU

Wut? What u mean? In case if ur wondering then im running on E8200 and the GTX275 card was on E8400 slightly clocked ... No big difference tho, E8200 and E8400 are the same, just different clockz0rs.

Quote from hazaky :

Wut? What u mean? In case if ur wondering then im running on E8200 and the GTX275 card was on E8400 slightly clocked ... No big difference tho, E8200 and E8400 are the same, just different clockz0rs.

Uh then the GTX 275 guy had over 9000 apps in background. Because in ALL benchmark raw performance of GTX 275 IS higher than 4870's one.

Quote from Shadowww :

Uh then the GTX 275 guy had over 9000 apps in background. Because in ALL benchmark raw performance of GTX 275 IS higher than 4870's one.

Dont know about that, but people usually like close all big programs while benchmarking - to get the maximum results.

Quote from Shadowww :

Uh then the GTX 275 guy had over 9000 apps in background. Because in ALL benchmark raw performance of GTX 275 IS higher than 4870's one.

Um, not according to the thousands of benchmarks at Tomshardware.com, visit sometime, might surprise you how well these 4000 series cards kick the living hell out of (I admit...my Nvidia babies....fanboy here) time and time again. Hell....my 4890 with a small OC is running with GTX 285, and if I go 100mhz on the core, like they did on tomshw, it wins in 66.7% of benchmarks, HAH.

these posts are funny. if i overclock x then it will be faster than y.
OF COURSE IT WILL, YOU'VE JUST OVERCLOCKED IT!!! overclock y too while you're at it. does anyone know how to make a fair comparison????

I just got a 4890. Not noticing too much of an improvement over my n9600GT Configuring it without a passive profiler tool in CCC was a bitch and quite a few compatibilty issues pissed me off for a while. Do I have to get off XP to get proper utilisation of this card or something?

Intel e8400, 4GB, HD4890 oc 1GB, WinXP SP2 32bit

Starting to regret this purchase.

Quote from JasonJ :

I just got a 4890. Not noticing too much of an improvement over my n9600GT

So upgrading 9800GT to it wouldn't make any sense at all?

Well all the benchmarks shows the 4890 is double overhead past the n9600GT. In theory I should be flying.

I think either im CPU bottle necked or I need another OS ?
Just asking if I should be on vista/Win7 to ustilise this new card fully?

Well Windows XP only uses DirectX 9, but other than that I don't see why it would be the same as a crappy 9600gt. I suppose you could give Windows 7 a try (and let the rest of us know if it changes anything!).

You're running the latest drivers for it? And at the highest 3D quality? Do the games at least LOOK better than they did on the 9600gt? Is there less lag? I'm asking cause you didn't specify what exactly the problem is, just that there's not much improvement. Are you referring to frame rates in particular or how smooth the games run?

Quote from JasonJ :

Just asking if I should be on vista/Win7 to ustilise this new card fully?

Not if ATI could make drivers properly.

Quote from Shadowww :

Not if ATI could make drivers properly.

U just cant stop flaming ATI, ye? The 4890 is a good card, it should outperform 9600 with more than ease. Check if something's bottlenecking. My E8200 CPU bottlenecks a bit with my HD4870. For example, CPU cant load many objects so fast in GTA IV. Overall, i get supreme speeds with the card, every game with max settings is very playable (30fps+ for sure).

1920x1080
Yes latest drivers. Ran DriverCleaner numerous times. Uninstalled FRAPS as the ATi didn't like that running. Installed ATi Tools to make use of passive profiling where a profile loads when the associated game loads. CCC can't do this..

All games I play are on med graphics settings, except LFS ia have hi-res textures and everthing maxed out except dynamic LOD reduction on 0.5 and bloom for some effects.
* BL1 on the start with no AI, 130 FPS (very similar to before using 9600GT)
* GTR-e still drops down to 48 FPS in the Fuchsröhre dip (very much the same as before using 9600GT)
* TDU still bottoms down to 45 in some areas (very similar to before using 9600GT)
* DiRT cant use AA (at all) even using ATi tools or CCC
* GTA iv only gained about 8 FPS (now min is 48)- although I think this is a CPU bottleneck
* BlackShark still nowhere near 60 FPS

It does look a little better on the AA in LFS and the AF is a little crisper and cleaner. The nVidia9600GT had a big issue with the edges of some objects and could not apply AA to them. That's fixed. But all other games pretty much look the same.

Temp of the card runs up to 64 deg C and is idle at 40 deg C at start up.

I'm not going to give up on it until after a fresh WinXP or 7 install and then see how it goes.

I didn't aim to hi-jack this thread, just wanted to know if I must install Win7 now I have this card, or not.

Quote from JasonJ :

* DiRT cant use AA (at all) even using ATi tools or CCC

ATI FTW. a

Having just gone from nVidia to ATi I haven't noticed any problems driver wise at all - the *only* annoying thing was you need an extra bit of software to add a custom resolution and even then if I joined the DVI world of EDID it wouldn't be a problem.

Quote from Shadowww :

Not if ATI could make drivers properly.

Some people just keep living in the past.
Maybe stop looking for dinosaurs... bit waste of time, although crocodiles....:P


Anyway, nvidia and ati have about the same amount of divers issues. ati releases new drivers evvery month and everymonth some things get fixed, sometimes performance improved and in rare cases new bugs are added. despite the huge buglist, its very rare i run into a real bug. And never encountered a driver problem so big, i couldnt run a game. There is one instance, but that is because there is a bug in a not very popualr game but the developers refuse to fix it.


Just wondering, why buy an outdated card? 5xxx series is already on the market with direct11 support, more power efficient and 200-60% faster then 4xxx cards when comparing equal series (4870 vs 5870)

Because 5870 is twice as expensive as 4870, and we're not all rich here.