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- Date:
- Monday , October 05, 2009
- Author:
- Matthew Krysiak
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
XFX Radeon HD 4890 Extreme Review
Today we are going to be evaluating the XFX Radeon HD 4890 Extreme, and if the box is anything to go by, we for should be in for a treat. We compare with a reference Radeon HD 4890 and a GeForce GTX 275 to see how it does in the latest games including Arma II, CoJ 2, and Ghostbusters.
Introduction
XFX is a well-known manufacturer to most PC gamers. A division of PINE Technology, XFX specializes in motherboards and video cards for PC gamers and hardware enthusiasts. In the past, XFX was an exclusive partner with NVIDIA delivering GeForce-based video cards. As of December 16th, 2008 that has all changed and they now also produce AMD ATI based video cards. The XFX website states:
XFX dares to go where the competition would like to, but can’t. That’s because, at XFX, we don’t just create great digital video components we build all-out, mind-blowing, performance-crushing, competition-obliterating video cards and motherboards. And, not only are they amazing, you don’t have to live on dry noodles and peanut butter to afford them.
XFX is known for their transferrable lifetime warranties, even if the cooling device is modified or replaced. Please be advised, though, that in order to receive this protection, the video card must be registered on the XFX website within 30 days of the original purchase, or the warranty defaults to just 1 year of coverage.
Today we are going to be focusing on XFX’s Radeon HD 4890 Extreme Edition.
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 4890
The AMD Radeon HD 4890 was launched on April 1, 2009. It is powered by AMD’s RV790. Its forbearer, the RV770, can be found on the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 series of video cards. Meant to take the place of the HD 4870, the reference frequencies have been increased on the HD 4890. The GPU clock rate increased by 100MHz to 850MHz and the memory clock rate increased by 75MHz, for an aggregate data-rate frequency of 3.9GHz, which is 300MHz over the Radeon HD 4870.
XFX Radeon HD 4890 Extreme
The Radeon HD 4890 Extreme is one of XFX’s latest version of the Radeon HD 4890 series of video cards. To quote the box:
Our XFX R&D team makes our XT cards instantly better right out of the box. They’re overclocked and ready to rock!
With such an enthusiastic pitch, extreme name, and XFX’s reputation for delivering awesome products, we expected great things from this video card. However, what we found was anything but that. There was nothing special about the cooling solution or parts chosen. For all intents and purposes it is physically a reference Radeon HD 4890. I know, you are probably still thinking, but wait the reference cooling solution is decent enough maybe they overclocked the heck out of the GPU and memory right? Well we are sorry to have to tell you this, we were quite disappointed when we opened GPU-Z only to find a minimal frequency boost to the GPU, and the memory frequency was left at reference frequencies. The GPU frequency was boosted by 25MHz to 875MHz, or to put it in perspective the GPU was overclocked by less than 3%. XFX does offer other variants, like their premier XXX Edition but that only uses the reference memory frequency and a GPU frequency of 900MHz.
The XFX Radeon HD 4890 Extreme comes in a small, but stout, box that measures only 12.75"x6.25"x4". On the front of the box, XFX notes the use of PCI Express 2.0 bus, 1GB of GDDR5 memory and their 5-star support. There are also two wrap around stickers: one to show that the game HAWX is included and another to show that this is an "Extreme Edition" video card.
In the second picture, we see the right side of the box that shows the recommend system requirements and a list of what is in the box. The third image shows the back of the box where XFX has listed the key features of all Radeon HD 4890s and go into further details about their 5 star support.
The first image in the next line of pictures shows the left side of the box, which further goes over details about the Radeon HD 4890 such as the HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support. The final picture shows the bottom of the box. This is where the two wrap around stickers continue to. The HAWX sticker continues on and mainly just goes over that this is violent game not for young children.
The Extreme Edition sticker goes on to pitch you the previously quoted line about how this video card is ". . . overclocked and ready to rock!" The last note worthy thing here is the label. If you are able to decipher it, we finally see some mention of frequency with the "HD 4890 875M 1GB DRR5. . ." So with this we see that the GPU as previously mention is running at 875MHz though on the entire box there is not one mention of what the memory is running at. To say the least that is disappointing to not even prominently show the GPU and memory frequency of a video card so touted as "Extreme Edition".
The Radeon HD 4890 Extreme uses a reference heatsink, but XFX has added their own theme to it with labels. They have also switched from the reference red PCB board and reference PCI cover to black ones. Other than those minor changes, the rest of the video card could be considered reference. There are two DVI ports and one S-Video port on the front. On the tail end of the video card are the two six-pin auxiliary power connectors and along the top are the crossfire connectors.
The video card comes with the basics: a Driver CD, an installation guide, a quick setup guide, a DVI to HDMI adapter, a DVI to D-sub adapter, two four-pin to six-pin power adaptors, a HDTV cable, and a crossfire bridge. It also comes with an "I’m gaming do not disturb" door hanger and a copy of HAWX.