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

Conclusions

XFX HD 4890 1GB XT

Many of ATI’s longtime faithful have had been waiting for a company to come along and offer them the same type or warranty length and support that had been offered to Nvidia’s customers for years. With XFX now an official ATI board partner, their wishes have come true. Not only did they carry over their excellent customer support but their unique Double Lifetime Warranty is also offered on all Radeon cards. A winning combination likethis means that XFX products are some of the best selling ATI-based SKUs on the market today.

The HD 4890 XT is a bit of an unassuming card considering its insignificant overclock is really nothing more than window dressing in the grand scheme of things. Its performance is fractionally above that of a reference HD 4890 but in all reality, a customer will never be able to tell the difference.

Regardless of performance in comparison to higher clocked cards, where the HD 4890 XT succeeds is in bringing some serious value to the table. XFX’s double lifetime warranty alone brings their customer’s piece of mind that none of the other board partners in this roundup can lay claim to and for some people it will prove to be an invaluable selling point. In addition, the inclusion of a full version of HawX just adds the icing on the cake. I am sure you know where this is already going but let’s make it official nonetheless: the XFX HD 4890 XT wins our Dam Good Value Award.




Final Thoughts

I am sure there are many of you who looked at our charts and saw the EVGA GTX 275 FTW and Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic battling it out for the pole position again and again. Is there really a winner here? Personally, I don’t think so and let me tell you why. I have a basic law of video card performance which states that Nvidia cards will perform better in some games while ATI products will perform best in others. It is no less true than saying water flows downhill or that we will all eventually die one day. Consequently, in traditionally Nvidia-centric titles the FTW walks away with things and not even the 1Ghz core speed of the Atomic can change anything about that. Flip that argument around and it is no less true. What we can say is that in some cases, ATI’s gamble with DX10.1 seems to be paying dividends.

Another question that has been asked has been this: what does it take for a HD 4890 to beat a stock GTX 285 in the majority of the benchmarks? You need the speeds of the Diamond HD 4890 XOC at lest and even then, it is a close thing. That being said, the HD 4890 Atomic definitely does the job of taking the GTX 285 to task if you can find one.

Thanks to all the companies who participated in this article