With the release of the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of video cards, I’ve been slowly retiring the 4800 series cards I’ve been using in my test rig for the past 18 months. This changing of the seasons inspired me to build another new main rig that features all AMD hardware, including two video cards in Crossfire. Admittedly neither of the Radeon HD 4890 cards I have are a match in specs. You can mix and match cards if need be, but the vanilla 4890 and the quietly cooled 4890 I have in my possession are too far apart from each other to work suitably in such an arrangement.
While searching for a proper match I discovered that GIGABYTE no longer made a vanilla 4890, but DIAMOND Multimedia was still producing them. I decided I should take a look at this final 4890 card and see how it stacks up, before digging elbow deep into the new Radeon 5800 series.
Features and Specifications
The DIAMOND 4890PE51GXOC Radeon HD 4890 pretty well explains what it is in the product name…mostly. This Radeon HD 4890 based video card is indeed overclocked from the factory, but it’s been tweaked a little more then what we’ve seen from other cards sporting the reference heatsink and fan.
DIAMOND has propped up the Core speed from the stock 850MHz to 925MHz, and the Memory clock speed from 975MHz to 1050MHz. Not only is this quite a boost from stock speeds, but it’s a nice bump in the shoulder from the last vanilla 4890 card we reviewed.
The card also features the same benefits seen in every other 4890 card which includes:
- Play the latest PC games supporting DirectX 10.1, the latest generation of gaming graphics.
- Work & Productivity Application
- Video playback and editing.
- HD video playback (Blu-ray and HD DVD) and editing.
- Everyday home computing applications (such as Vista, photos, standard videos, and games).
Full specifications for the DIAMOND card can be found on the product home page. As for pricing, it’s kinda silly to talk about pricing on a 4890 at this stage in the game. Newegg does have the card listed for $219 USD, but I’m sure as the 5800 series cards expand their availability, the price on the 4890 will drop.
It should actually make a good performance upgrade for those who already have a 4890 and want an extra boost. At least that’s the theory I’ll be working with, as I will be testing how much of a performance boost I get as I build myself a Crossfire based main rig.
What Else is in the Box?
The accessories included with the DIAMOND 4890 card are the same as what is typically found with any other base 4890 card. There’s a DVI-to-VGA and DVI-to-HDMI adaptor to make sure you have your display ports covered. Should you be hooking this up to a TV and only have analogue inputs available, a component video and two composite adapters are also included. Finally an envelope is included that includes a drivers disk and manual.
Reference Design With a Twist
The DIAMOND 4890PE51GXOC Radeon HD 4890 video card follows ATI’s reference design for the card extremely closely. DIAMOND doesn’t even go with their own graphic on the cooler. Instead they opt to use a picture of Ruby, ATI’s well known virtual model and spokesperson.
The card features a dual slot cooling solution that uses a variable speed fan, ensuring quiet cooling when the computer isn’t being fully used and abused. If it wasn’t for the fact that this card is factory overclocked well beyond stock speeds, I would pretty well call it an ATI reference card.
A Closer Look
The rear of the card doesn’t hold any secrets or surprises when it comes to connection ports. Here we find two DVI ports, and video out port for the analogue composite and component video outputs. The card is fully HDCP compliant, so when combined with the included HDMI adaptor this card is able to be used to output an HD signal to any HDCP compliant HDTV or PC display.
The card is powered by two 6-pin PCIe connectors, plugged into port on the rear edge of the card. The length of this card combined with the position of these ports may cause some problems for those with smaller cases, or cases with a unique configuration. Power stability is handled by the use of solid state Japanese capacitors. This should also help with getting the extra voltage needed for a stable overclock, should you want to push the card a little further than it already is.
This card of course comes with the appropriate Crossfire connections, allowing you to run this card in both dual-card Crossfire configurations and multi-card CrossfireX configurations. DIAMOND does include one Crossfire connector with the card, assuming that your second or third card will have the second needed Crossfire connector.
The Test Rig
To test the DIAMOND 4890PE51GXOC Radeon HD 4890 video card, we installed it into the following test rig
- AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition CPU
- GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P AM3 790FX Motherboard
- Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3-1600 Dual Channel Memory Kit
- GIGABYTE GV-R489-1GH-B Radeon HD 4890 Video Card
- Kingston SSDnow V-Series 128GB Solid State Hard Drive
- HighSpeed PC Top Deck Tech Station
- Ultra Products X4 1050W Modular ATX Power Supply
We tossed the box drivers and used the latest drivers from ATI. Not only will we be comparing the DIAMOND card to the GIGABYTE card we reviewed a ways back, we will be setting them up in Crossfire to see what kind of performance boost you get. Since the GIGABYTE card has lower clocks then the DIAMOND, I also cranked up the clock speed so they match in Crossfire.
As for actual benchmarks we ran through a nice combination of synthetic and real world tests. We added a new benchmark to our suite of video card tests. Using the game Darkest of Days we’ll be able to test how turning on PhysX acceleration affects game performance. Otherwise we pretty well focused on gaming, trying to pick the most punishing titles in a particular genre.
3DMark06 Pro
We lead off with a dip into the old but still usable 3DMark 06 Pro, run at default settings. This DirectX 9 based benchmark suite tests the performance of video cards in all DX9 based features.
The DIAMOND card has an 8% speed advantage over the GIGABYTE card, but in our runs through this benchmark the DIAMOND card only produced a 3% jump in performance. I was hoping to see a bigger jump when moving to Crossfire, but it wasn’t to be so. 3DMark 06 performance only jumped an additional 12% with the cards in Crossfire.
3DMark Vantage
Our test runs in 3DMark Vantage managed to shine some light on why the 3DMark06 numbers were a little underwhelming. Crossfire really only starts to give a significant performance boost at high resolutions and detail settings.
Running at 1280×1024, the Performance test only produced a 6% performance boost for the DIAMOND card, and an additional 27% boost with both cards in Crossfire. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but comparing those results to the near-perfect doubling in performance on the Extreme test really illustrates this point. Hopefully these numbers trend well in our real world tests.
Darkest of Days – PhysX Test
Sadly PhysX doesn’t work too well on ATI cards, since it’s an NVIDIA technology. Measures are being taken to rectify that, but for now if you are running an ATI-based video subsystem no physics acceleration for you! That is unless you find a title that supports the Havoc engine. Because of this, there was little to no difference in performance between our three test configurations in our PhysX test.
Call of Duty 4
We decided to start off with Call of Duty 4 in our real world tests of the DIAMOND 4890PE51GXOC Radeon HD 4890 video card. Though this popular DX9 title has a sequel of sorts out, it uses the same engine. As well, CoD4 still has a large audience of amateur and pro players. As for the game engine, it does have a fair degree of graphical complexity for a DX9 based engine. All our tests were performed with maximum settings at the two most frequently used wide screen LCD resolutions.
The final results showed the DIAMOND card only pulling ahead of the GIGABYTE card by 2% at both resolutions. That may sound low, but the Crossfire numbers are even lower, relatively speaking. At 1680×1050 the Crossfire rig didn’t make any appreciable difference in performance, and at 1920×1200 Crossfire producing a low 5% jump in performance.
Considering you have effectively double the video performance, this is kind of weak.
Team Fortress 2
TF2 is a credit to Steam! I’ve made this proclamation a number of times in my best Heavy impression. I do enjoy this game a lot, and the Valve twisted sense of humour tickles my funny bone regularly. I was glad to get to use this for testing. The test consisted of running a recorded match as a timedemo, with graphics settings crank up, only switching the resolution between tests. The two video cards on their own were quite close to each other in performance. Placing both in Crossfire boosted performance by 25% across the board.
World in Conflict
DirectX 10 based titles are where you would think a Crossfire rig would excel. This version of the DX10 gaming API debuted with Windows Vista, and is said to produce much more realistic graphics and lots of crazy enhancements. These enhancements of couse need more video horsepower. I was expecting performance jumps in the 40s from this game and this setup, but the Crossfire configuration produced a 20% and 25% jump in our two resolutions in World in Conflict. The DIAMOND card on it’s own was 5% faster in this test.
Crysis
Finally we turn to Crysis, the one game I’d think would come close to that magical 50% jump we saw all the way back in 3DMark Vantage. Unfortunately that’s not the case, with the Crossfire rig actually being slower at the lower resolution (if only for a statistically-insignificant amount), and only 12% faster at the higher resolution. At least the frame rates are playable, something that doesn’t happen all the often in Crysis.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
As I’ve mentioned the DIAMOND 4890PE51GXOC Radeon HD 4890 could easily be mistaken for a bone stock ATI reference card, especially if you didn’t know about i’s factory overclock. The question is did that overclock become a factor in this being the better card to buy? Also how does it stand up in a big complex Crossfire rig?
It’s fairly clear from the get-go that this card benefits a small amount from the aforementioned overclock, which is covered under warranty. This card will be an excellent upgrade for those who want dual video cards, as the initial releases of the 5800 series are going to disappear quick. This should also become an inexpensive upgrade, as prices should continue to drop with the release of the new chip, making it a fantastic value upgrade for someone already brandishing an HD 4890 card in their system.
In the end, this card from DIAMOND can easily stand on it’s own in a system. It can also easily augment your existing system with extra video power. It’s a solid card with extra performance tweaks so you feel special.
Pros
- Excellent performance in high res games
- Stable factory overclock boosts stock performance
- Inexpensive upgrade for current HD 4890 owners
Cons
- No bundled goodies to set it apart from other products
- Feels the pressure from the HD 5800 series
Overall Rating: 8.5/10.0
Love This Review? Hate This Review? Tell Us In The Forums!
DIAMOND 4890PE51GXOC Radeon HD 4890 1GB Video Card Photo Gallery
