It's D-day! The two biggest players in the graphics card industry have just launched their latest incarnations of their graphic cards, and who other than Techtree to give you the inside scoop on not one but both graphics cards. For those not in the loop, ATI has launched their HD4890 graphics card, while Nvidia has their GTX275 card. Both these cards have slight improvements over their predecessors, which we'll explore in a bit more detail. They don't offer anything new in terms of technology and seem like fillers for their line-up.
Today's comparison will concentrate solely on which chipset offers more performance rather than a brand comparison. This time, XFX and Zotac provided us their samples early on, which is why we could give you this comparison right away; kudos to them. Let's look at both the ATI and Nvidia line-ups to see where these cards fit in, and whether they were really needed in the first place.
ATI HD4890
The much-awaited RV790 chip is finally here, although there's really not much to cheer about since there is nothing new technology-wise. The most striking difference would be the core clock, which has been increased by a 100MHz, as well as the memory, which is bumped up slightly from the stock 3.6GB/s to 3.9GB/s. The rest pretty much remains the same with 55nm fabrication, 800 shaders, and 1GB of GDDDR5 memory. What's interesting is the idle power consumption, which is supposed to be 30% lower as compared to the HD4870; let's see if that's true.
Looking at ATI's line-up, there is a huge gap between the HD4870 (1GB) and the HD4870 X2. I think that the HD4890 will eventually replace the HD4870 1GB. When you think about it, it's not really filling the gap in the line-up, but instead it's just a slightly improved version of the existing card. Hey, if Nvidia can do that each time, I think we can excuse ATI this once.
Nvidia GTX275
Nvidia was supposed to launch this card much later, but at the last moment decided to pull the launch forward to - well, you guessed it, 2 April. I guess the thought of another blockbuster from ATI really scared them, and it also makes great fodder for an article for guys like us, so everyone wins.
Looks familiar? That's because the GTX275 is essentially a single PCB (and core) GTX295. If you remember, the GTX295 is a dual GPU, dual PCB card pre-configured in SLI. The GTX275 has exactly the same specifications as the GTX295, with 240 shaders and 896MB of GDDR3 memory running on a 448-bit memory bus. It's actually a very interesting card. I mean, think about it, you have the 240 cores of the GTX280; couple it with the stripped down memory bus of the GTX260, and you have a powerful graphics card in the 17-18K range. The GTX260 (216 shaders) anyways retails for around 17K and shares the same features; when we buy the GTX275, we get the full shader count of 240 for just a little more, making it more attractive.
Two things may happen, either the GTX275 may eat into the sales of the GTX260 (216 shaders), or Nvidia will drop the price further and chuck out the old 65nm GTX260 (192 shaders).
Now that we know what lies ahead, let take a closer look at the two offerings, the XFX HD4890 and the Zotac GTX275.
The Contenders
There you go, the rival cards in the same frame. Nothing much has changed in the cooling department, as both the HD4890 and the GTX275 continue to use the same reference cooler like their predecessors. The HD4890 still uses the same cooler with the large blower style fan. The GTX275 too uses the same cooler and is slightly longer compared to the HD4890.
We have the reference connectors for both cards here; both feature two dual-link DVI ports and a S-video out port. The dual slot design is needed to exhaust the hot air these cores churn out.
Looking at the cards from the top, we see that the cooler of the HD4890 is slightly thicker as compared to Nvidia's cooler.
Both the cards come with two 6-pin power connectors. The Nvidia card still needs a SPDIF audio connector in order to get sound over HDMI. ATI has the audio decoding chip built into the board itself, which is a lot less of a hassle.
Testbench
CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme X9770 at 3.2 GHz
Motherboard: Asus Rampage Extreme
RAM: 2 x 1GB DDR3 1600 MHz Corsair Dominators
HDD: Hitachi 250 GB SATA II (7200 rpm)
PSU: CoolerMaster 1000W
Cabinet: CoolerMaster Mystique
Monitor: Viewsonic G90fB monitor (19-inch, Max Res. 1920 x 1440)
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate
VGA Driver: Forceware 185.63, ATI Catalyst 9.12
3DMark 06
3DMark Vantage
Far Cry 2 (DX 10)
We used the FarCry 2 benchmark tool 1.0.0.1. Everything was set to High in Overall Quality with Direct3D 10, and the game was looped three times before a final average score was obtained. Filtering and AA were set as Application Controlled in the drivers.
Crysis (DX 10)
We used the Crysis benchmarking tool with High Quality preset. We set the Shadows Quality, Physics Quality, and Sound Quality as Low, and selected DirectX 10, and the game was looped three times before a final average score was obtained. Filtering and AA were set as Application Controlled in the drivers.
Overclocking and Power Consumption
RivaTuner did not detect either of the cards, so we had to use an alternate route. Luckily, Zotac has their FireStorm software bundled in with their driver CD. With this, we were able to take the standard edition of the GTX275 and push the core all the way to 680MHz from the stock 633MHz. The memory as usual didn't go up by much, and settled at a stable 2268MHz. Overall, we got a decent boost of 7%, but sadly this did not reflect much in the scores of 3DMark 06 or Vantage, giving me just a 2% increase.
The ATI Overdrive just refused to work for some weird reason. We tried the latest driver (Catalyst 9.3) and even the one AMD provided, but the Overdrive page continued to be blank. Really strange. Well, hopefully, we'll have it working for the full review.
The HD4890 idles at just 55W and the GTX275 at 43W; that's a 10W difference. But things change dramatically once we fire up a game. The tables turn with the HD4890 consuming just 160W, while the GTX275 needs 30% more power at 190W.
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