ATI Radeon HD 4890 Roundup (ASUS, Diamond, HIS, Sapphire, XFX)

Conclusions

HIS HD 4890 1GB Turbo

Ah HIS, what can we say about thee? Based on its price / performance ratio alone, their HD 4890 Turbo had some real potential to be one of the forerunners in this roundup. It was able to offer performance above and beyond that of a stock HD 4890 while retailing for approximately the same price and availability is pretty good as well. That my friends, is a recipe for success.

Unfortunately, an apparent BIOS flashing mishap seems to have left many of their supposedly overclocked cards running at stock speeds. As we said several times in this roundup: after spending over $1000 for five HIS Turbo cards from several retailers, only one of them ended up having the correct clock speeds. Luckily, because of that lone card we were able to include the Turbo into our roundup. We don’t even know if these issues are limited to the Canadian market for the simple reason that HIS has yet to return any of our emails over the past two weeks. If this is how they treat all their potential customers, then shame on them.

We need to hear from HIS regarding how far this issue extends into the retail channel and what kind of measures will be put in place to take care of customers who paid for an overclocked card but received one with stock clocks. Until then, we are going to do something we have never done before: recommend you avoid the HIS HD 4890 Turbo at all costs.

If you have this card, we invite you to post in this thread on our forums so we can get some idea if these issues are limited to the Canadian market or are worldwide.



Sapphire HD 4890 1GB Atomic

In the past I have talked about how reviewing products on a daily basis will cause a reviewer’s opinion of generic hardware to become a bit jaded. As such, it takes a hell of a lot for me to sit up and get really worked up about a product but the Sapphire HD 4870 Atomic had me beside myself with excitement. I couldn’t wait for benchmarks to finish so I could see what insane performance levels this card would post next. At times it felt like I was dog running circles around a family picnic waiting for the next bone to be thrown on the ground.

Performance is one thing but the Atomic gets so many things right that it is impossible to find any faults with it. It will be priced at around $300 USD which makes it quite a bit less expensive than a GTX 285 and even many GTX 275s on the market. It also has an accessory package filled with useful applications and cables. Even its heatsink performs miracles with a core that is clocked far above many of the cards featured here but goes about its job in near silence. In all reality, the only issue I really have with this card is that availability is non-existent.

Every now and then, the planets align and the Hardware Gods grace us with that absolutely perfect piece of hardware. Well, the Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic is just that and more. We have never done this before but I’m going to give this card every award we’ve got. The Dam Good Award because it really is that good. The Dam Innovative Award due to its lower than expected power consumption, low noise output and amazing temperatures. Finally it gets the Dam Good Value Award because it more often than not grabs a stock GTX 285 and smacks it around while yelling “who’s your DADDY!?!” over and over again while retailing for about $50 less. Bravo Sapphire.