XFX HD 4890 Review
I had no reason at all to upgrade my video card. The ol' GTX 260 core 216 was running strong at my native resolution of 1920 x 1200 with everything cranked in almost any game. With 4GB of ram, and a quad core Intel processor running at 3.2GHz, there isn't really much out right now that makes my primary gaming system sweat. However, when a deal came my way to get a 4890 for almost no cost to myself, I couldn't help but jump on it. So today I will be reviewing the XFX HD 4890. Because of the great price, and the warranty policies that XFX puts on their products, I felt it was a good choice, and an opportunity to have some fun with new hardware.
The 4890 runs on the RV790, which is a 55nm fab process. It has about 959 million transistors. The older RV770 found in the 4870 has about 3 million fewer transistors. DX10.1 and ShaderModel 4.1 support round out the features of the 4890 ( at least the ones I'm mentioning here ).
This particular XFX 4890 runs at stock specifications. OC models are out there, but I don't feel the need to pay extra for an overclocked version when I can easily do that job myself. The core clock runs at 850MHz. On board is 1024MB of GDDR5 running at 3.9GHz ( 4 x 975 MHz ).
That about covers the basics of the cards specifications. It's time to move onto looking at the card itself, and putting it through some initial analysis.
The card arrived from NCIX in a plain brown box, but within this bland packing was the fancy stylized box you see below.
Inside the initial box is yet another plain black box with print. This brings my total sum of boxes up to three, and I haven't even seen the card yet.
Inside this box is the stacked software cables and manuals. Underneath this is yet another box. This final box contains the actual card itself. As you can see the card I ordered came with both HAWX, and Wheelman. I will look into reviewing these games later....maybe. You also get the usual adapters, and paperwork.
