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Cost vs Performance:
The purchasing decision for a 4890 easily comes down to cost vs performance. How much are you getting out of the 4890 vs how much does it cost you. Considering the 4890 is targeted by AMD/ATI towards competing with the Nvidia GTX 260 and not the GTX 280 the choice is rather simple.
As we mentioned earlier the 4890 should hit the streets with a price point about $229 which makes it approximately $30 more expensive than the GTX 260. But for the extra $30 you gain an additional 128MB of memory and performance well over the GTX 260. Lets take a look at the comparison:
For our example we used the same test setup as previously mentioned and substituted the 4890 for the Nvidia BFG GTX 260 which we picked up locally at Best Buy. We ran four of the same benchmarks utilizing the GTX 260 on a clean installation.
Test Setup:
AMD 940 X4 Phenom II
MSI Dragon Platform
4GB (2x2GB)Mushkin DDR2 PC8500
Seagate 500GB 7200.11 Hard Drive
HIS ATI 4890
Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64bit
Comparison Gaming and Benchmarks Used:
- 3D Mark Vantage
- Stalker- Clear Sky
- Left 4 Dead
- Crysis Warhead
3D Mark Vantage:
BFG Nvidia GTX 260 |
HIS Radeon 4890 OC |
|
| Performance | 9104 |
11005 |
| High | 6443 |
6755 |
| Extreme | 4220 |
4654 |
| Superior Score | Inferior Score |
Stalker- Clear Sky:
BFG Nvidia GTX 260 |
HIS Radeon 4890 OC |
|
| 1024 X 768 | 31.5 fps |
41.3 fps |
| 1200 X 1600 | 23.3 fps |
32.5 fps |
| 1920 X 1200 | 19.4 fps |
28.6 fps |
| Superior Score | Inferior Score |
Left 4 Dead:
BFG Nvidia GTX 260 |
HIS Radeon 4890 OC |
|
| 1024 X 768 8xAA 16x AF | 99.4 fps |
131.2 fps |
| 1200 X 1600 8xAA 16x AF | 85.6 fps |
111.3 fps |
| 1920 X 1200 8xAA 16x AF | 75.8 fps |
95.4 fps |
| Superior Score | Inferior Score |
Crysis Warhead:
BFG Nvidia GTX 260 |
HIS Radeon 4890 OC |
|
| 1024 X 768 | 37.9 fps |
41.1 fps |
| 1200 X 1600 | 31.7 fps |
33.3 fps |
| 1920 X 1200 | 27.3 fps |
28.9 fps |
| Superior Score | Inferior Score |
As you can see the GTX 260 gets owned by the 4890 in each of our tests. As for the cost vs performance:
HIS ATI Radeon 4890 |
BFG Nvidia GTX 260 |
|
| Performance Per Dollar$ * | 5.93 GFLOPs/$ |
3.59 GFLOPs/$ |
| Performance Per Watt (at Maximum Power) ** | 7.15 GFLOPs/Watt |
3.92 GFLOPS/Watt |
* The HIS Radeon Has a Compute Power of 1.36 TFLOPs. The GTX 260 Has a Compute Power of 715 GFLOPs.
** The 4890 is rated for a maximum power consumption of 190W. The GTX 260 is rated for a maximum power consumption of 182W.
When put into perspective we can see why the 4890 is a better choice than the GTX 260 for its lower power consumption vs performance and overall greater performance per dollar spent.
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