Legit Video Card Reviews

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 Versus ATI Radeon HD 4890

Manufacturer: ATI
Product: GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890
Date: Thu, Apr 02, 2009 - 01:00 AM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Radeon HD 4890 Overclocking

ATI Radeon HD 4890 OC Video Card Overclocking

To overclock the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 OC graphics card, I used ATI Overdrive that is part of the CATALYST Control Center. When you 'unlock' the ATI Overdrive, you can manually set the clock and memory settings or let the 'auto-tune' utility set the frequencies for you. Just for fun, I tried out the auto-tune feature to see if it could really find a stable clock configuration, and it worked in just a few minutes and did not lock up the system. This utility determines the highest core and memory clock frequency that is stable and shows you what the GPU temperature is and how much load the GPU is under during testing.  I started out at the default settings of 900MHz on the core and 975MHz on the memory, but was able to reach 990MHz on the core and 1190MHz on the memory. This is a 90MHz overclock on the core and a 225MHz boost on the GDDR5 memory ICs. 

ATI Radeon HD 4890 Video Card Overclocking

To test out the overclock I fired up 3DMark Vantage again and this time got a score of X5451.  The score went up 576 points, which was an improvement of 11.8%!

ATI Radeon HD 4890 Video Card Overclocking

In case you forgot what the stock score was I tossed the overclocked numbers into the performance chart with the other cards to give you an idea on how it stacks up to the competition with the overclock. It is just a tad behind the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275! 

NVIDIA got the GeForce GTX 275 to us at the very last minute and we will be looking at overclocking on that card at a later time.

Next Page - Final Thoughts and Conclusions


Review Index
Page 1 - NVIDIA and AMD - Spring 2009 Cards Arrive
Page 2 - The Radeon HD 4890 OC and 4890
Page 3 - The ASUS Retail Box and Bundle
Page 4 - The GeForce GTX 275
Page 5 - The Test System
Page 6 - Crysis Warhead
Page 7 - Far Cry 2
Page 8 - Stalker: Clear Sky
Page 9 - Call of Duty: World At War
Page 10 - Tom Clancy: H.A.W.X.
Page 11 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 12 - Power Consumption
Page 13 - Temperature Testing
Page 14 - Radeon HD 4890 Overclocking
Page 15 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions