ATI Radeon HD 4890: The RV790 Unveiled

Name: ATI Radeon HD 4890: The RV790 Unveiled - Page 8
Brand: ATI

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, April 02, 2009, 12:01 AM EDT

For our next set of performance metrics, we spent some time overclocking the new Radeon HD 4890 using the Overdrive utility built into ATI's Catalyst drivers.

Overclocking The Radeon HD 4890

Pedal To The Metal

Using the auto-tune utility built right into the Overdrive tab, we were very easily able to take the reference Radeon HD 4890 (Asus EAH4890) up from its default CPU and Memory clock speeds of 850MHz and 975MHz, respectively, to an impressive 975MHz and 1035MHz. With the card overclocked, we re-ran a couple of benchmarks and saw significant performance improvements, as you might expect. The framerate in our ET:QW benchmark went up by 7.9 FPS (8.8%) and our L4D result increased by 8.74 FPS (10%). With this kind of headroom in a reference cards, we're eager to see what some board parters are able to do with custom designs that feature more elaborate cooling solutions.

We should also point out that Asus' Radeon HD 4890 offerings also include a copy of the company's SmartDoctor Utility that gives uses the ability to tweak voltages for even better overclocks. We weren't able to test SmartDoctor here due to time constraints, but suspect GPU speeds in excess of 1GHz are possible with some additional effort.

Tags: AMD, ATI, Radeon, graphics, GPU

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com