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Nvidia GTX 280 vs ATI Radeon 4890, what is a better choice?

S

Shargrath

Member
Of the two you listed, the 4890 is the faster card. Good luck finding that one in stock again though, it's in really high demand. It will likely be out of stock within hours of being restocked.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102809

This is a very good deal. It's faster than the GTX 280. I haven't seen benchmarks comparing it with a 1Ghz 4890 though.

Going for best bang for buck though, I'd suggest looking for a non overclocked 4890 that is going for $180 or less after rebate.
 
Originally posted by: evolucion8
With less than $300 you can get this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102809 and outperform the GTX 285 even when overclocked. But if you don't want to deal with scaling issues that may happen, then I recommend you the Sapphire card that you linked, it has a better feature set and better video features like VC-1 BluRay acceleration.
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This. If you are going to spend $250+ and not going with a 4870x2 or a GTX 295 then you should go with the 4850x2. It a beast of a card and will top pretty much anything in this thread so far.

 
Is X2 just the name for a single card or is two cards in crossfire or something?

Sorry been out of loop on hardware since I built my current system.

And the 4850 beats a 4890?!

And what about the card Happy Medium recommended?

Note : I do not overclock, so I am only looking for best card when running it at stock. If its already "professionally" overclocked for me, that's fine, but I am not looking to do any overclocking on my own.

 
The X2 means it is two gpus on one card. A Radeon HD 4850 X2 will perform the same as having two separate 4850 cards and running them in crossfire. A single 4850 does not beat a 4890, but two 4850s do.

The card Happy Medium recommended is also an excellent choice. You really can't go wrong at all honestly. Now is like a golden age to buy video cards. You can get absurdly fast cards at every price point pretty much. They are all solid as well.

I remember when the $50 card was the pos Geforce FX 5200. Nowdays, you can get a Radeon HD 4670 for $50 after rebate. The quality of gaming that someone gets for $50 is so much better than it used to be, it's amazing.
 
Originally posted by: Shargrath
Okay these two cards have a slight price difference, going by these two examples,

GTX 280
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814143145

Radeon 4890
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...9&ref=dynamitedata.com

But which card would be a better choice? I looked for benchmarks online and both seem to do well, but I am not too sure on which GPU is the better buy at this moment?
Which of the two cards should give better performance with a Phenom II : X4 : 920 CPU?!

Thanks in advance!
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I think through the Catalyst Control Center you can run the overclock tester on a normal 4890. It might very well, allow a 1000Mhz overclock; thus you waont have to spend the money on a gimmick.
 
Which model of the 4890 would you recommend then? The one I listed seems to be forever out of stock and priced higher due to being overclocked. I'm not really interested in overclocking, so can you guys recommend me a specific 4890 model/brand?

thank you, this is very helpful!
 
While there might be truth in opinions on brands, I've had great luck buying whatever's on sale. This time it was HIS (missed the Sapphire sale). Have owned Leadtek, Sapphire, Connect3D, Palit, Gigabyte, ASUS and PNY - all worked great and still are (AFAIK - still have some of them running in other systems).

$163+ship for the vanilla HIS : http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2307162&enterthread=y
 
Most stock 4890's get to around 950mhz Core when overclocked so a single 4890 would be the go- unless you want to splash out on one of those 1ghz core clocked ones 😀.
 
It is up to you, but why not overclock?? If you get the ATI card, you can do it from right in the Catalyst Control Center. Just click on the overdrive tool to unlock it. The software will even test the system to determine the best overclock. If this causes problems, just back off a bit. I am not that technically adept, but I have done this with every ATI card I had and never had any problems.
 
Originally posted by: TidusZ
Originally posted by: happy medium
If your looking to spend 300$ on a fast card this gtx 275 will beat a 1000Mhz 4890 and a gtx 285.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130479

masteryoda ...your seeing things:laugh:
Click to expand...

Those are some really amazing clockspeeds, must be handpicked cards.. Remind me not to buy the vanilla version cards from EVGA 😱
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it's got subzero cooling on it.

I agree with most of the other posters here, spend ~ $160 for a stock 4890 (check in hot deals, there are two there now). Most 4890's that I've seen get to 1000mhz core even on stock cooling with no voltage mods.
 
Originally posted by: happy medium
If your looking to spend 300$ on a fast card this gtx 275 will beat a 1000Mhz 4890 and a gtx 285.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130479

masteryoda ...your seeing things:laugh:
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, where is a review that shows this card beating the Atomic 4890?

The 4890 Atomic has a 17%~ gpu overclock and a 7%~ memory overclock. The GTX 275 FTW has a 12%~ gpu overclock, an 11%~ memory overclock, and a 7%~ shader overclock. At stock speeds, the cards trade blows, but the 4890 Atomic has a higher average % overclock than the GTX 275 FTW. Seems to me these cards should still trade blows with a nod if being given at all being given to the 4890 based on clocks alone.
 
Originally posted by: frozentundra123456
It is up to you, but why not overclock?? If you get the ATI card, you can do it from right in the Catalyst Control Center. Just click on the overdrive tool to unlock it. The software will even test the system to determine the best overclock. If this causes problems, just back off a bit. I am not that technically adept, but I have done this with every ATI card I had and never had any problems.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't overclock because the benefit I get are going to be small and I am putting myself at risk of the equipment not running as long as it should. I'd rather run it at intended factory setting, since the gains I would get are still going to be marginal.

 
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