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Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD 4890 Review August 26, 2009 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: With its Zalman cooling, DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI outputs, Gigabyte's GV-R489OC-1GD is tailor made for HTPC use in a high-end PC. Thanks to factory OC'ing, the card should appeal to gamers as well. See how this card stacks up to ATI's stock 4890 in this review!
 Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD Radeon 4890 Review | Page:: ( 1 / 6 ) |
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There are three basic categories of Radeon HD 4890 cards available on the market today. On the low-end are the plain jane reference designs that are exact replicas of each other and rely on the bone stock cooling and clock speeds ATI dictates at a minimum for the Radeon 4890 GPU. These cards tend to be priced cheaper – often right around $200 or less – as they're essentially competing for the gamer on a budget who wants no frills, and just wants to get their hands on 4890 technology at the lowest price point possible.
Then there are the hardware enthusiasts who want performance. For this user, card manufacturers offer their factory OC'ed 4890 boards.
Earlier this summer these cards tended to rely on the stock ATI cooler as well, but newer boards released in the last two months have offered significantly better cooling. These cards tend to reach for clock speeds approaching the 1GHz core clock frequency, and are priced appropriately.
The third camp wants the high-end cooling found on the aforementioned OC’ed 4890 cards; ATI’s stock cooler isn’t good enough. At the same time though these users don’t want to pay the $220+ many of the fastest Radeon 4890 cards sell for.
Basically, they want good GPU cooling, but they don’t want to be forced to donate an organ to afford it either.
Tapping into a different market: HTPCs
With their latest Radeon 4890 card, Gigabyte’s trying to entice a fourth category of users: the HTPC (home theater PC) crowd. Their GV-R489OC-1GD board ships with an aftermarket heatsink/fan solution from the cooling aficionados at Zalman, but at the same time the card is also affordable: it sells for $210 right now on Newegg. The card is also tailored for HTPC use thanks to its low noise cooler and diverse array of video outputs -- the board ships with dual-link DVI, DisplayPort, and a gold-plated HDMI video output.
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Gigabyte also touts the GV-R489OC-1GD as their latest Ultra Durable VGA card, but to be honest ATI’s reference design already incorporates many of Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable features and as such most of the board-level components on Gigabyte’s card are the same as the ATI 4890 reference board design. Gigabyte has sourced different capacitors than the reference board, but everything else is the same as the reference design including the 4.0Gbps GDDR5 memory modules from Qimonda (Ultra Durable VGA cards traditionally rely only on memory modules from Samsung or Hynix).
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It’s the dual-slot cooling you’ll probably be most interested in though. Gigabyte relies on Zalman’s VF1050 for cooling duties. The VF1050 is a bit of a hybrid in the sense that it isn’t quite a VF1000, nor is it a VF2000. It’s a ‘tweener that incorporates bits of both designs.
Its most important feature is its quad heatpipes. These heatpipes are responsible for drawing heat off the GPU, which is then distributed to a dual-slot aluminum heatsink. From there, heat is dispersed by a 75mm fan.
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Unlike the retail Zalman coolers you can purchase online, the OEM Zalman cooler Gigabyte employs doesn’t ship with RAMsinks: the board’s memory modules are completely uncooled. Keep in mind that cooling isn’t necessary, as the modules are fully rated to run at 4890 speeds uncooled. In addition, another difference between Gigabyte’s cooler and a retail Zalman cooler is that the Gigabyte heatsink/fan unit also lacks Zalman’s Fanmate fan controller. Fanmate can be used to manually adjust the fan’s RPMs on-the-fly.
Zalman prefers to keep Fanmate exclusive to their retail cards: of the dozens of Zalman-equipped VGA cards we’ve tested over the years, none of them have ever shipped with Fanmate.
The Zalman cooler Gigabyte uses on the GV-R489OC-1GD is a terrific performer though. As you’ll see in the benchmarks, it outperformed the stock ATI Radeon 4890 cooler while delivering comparable noise output. What’s most notable is that it manages to do this while running at higher clock speeds than the stock 4890.
Clock speeds
While ATI’s reference specifications call for an 850MHz core clock speed for the 4890 graphics core, Gigabyte ups the core clock to 900MHz on their GV-R489OC-1GD, an improvement of 6% over stock. The board’s memory is then clocked at 975MHz, the same speed as ATI’s reference speeds.
Bumping up the graphics core 50MHz will improve performance over the stock 4890. The OC is a little tamer than some of the other 4890 cards on the market, but those cards are more expensive too. A quick check of Newegg reveals that Gigabyte’s GV-R489OC-1GD is one of the cheapest 900MHz Radeon 4890 cards on the market with aftermarket cooling.
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Accessories
One downside to many competing Radeon 4890 cards that ship with HDMI and DisplayPort outputs is that they lack a dual DVI output option. Instead you’re limited to just one DVI.
Considering the rise in popularity of dual display, this is a huge oversight on the part of card manufacturers.
Fortunately this isn’t a problem for the Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD. Gigabyte thoughtfully includes an HDMI-to-DVI adapter that you plug into the HDMI output on the backplate of the card to power a second DVI display. The card also ships with a DVI-to-VGA adapter for those of you still running VGA monitors.
Also included in the card’s packaging is the obligatory CrossFire cable and 6-pin PCIe power adapter.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 2 / 6 ) |
Intel Core i7-920
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme
6GB OCZ Reaper HPC DDR3-1600
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 216 core
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1GB
ForceWare 190.38
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD Radeon 4890
Catalyst 9.8
300GB Western Digital Caviar SE
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/Service Pack 2
Benchmarks
Fallout 3
Crysis
STALKER: Clear Sky
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5 Performance Benchmark
Fallout 3
| Performance | Page:: ( 3 / 6 ) |
| Temps/Overclocking | Page:: ( 4 / 6 ) |
Overclocking
Temps
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 5 / 6 ) |
Pros
HTPC-ready: With its HDMI and DisplayPort outputs available right on the back plate of the graphics card, Gigabyte’s GV-R489OC-1GD is equipped to drive the latest LCD and plasma televisions right out of the box, no adapters needed.
A dual-link DVI is also provided in case you’d like to hook the card up to your monitor, or perhaps your TV lacks HDMI and DisplayPort connections.
In theory, Gigabyte’s use of gold plating for the HDMI output should provide better protection from electromagnetic interference (EMI) than traditional nickel-plated connectors; ensuring the best possible signal quality.
Excellent Cooling: The GV-R489OC-1GD uses a heatsink/fan unit from Zalman, their VF1050.
With quad heatpipes and a dual-slot heatsink, the VF1050 does an excellent job of keeping the RV790 chip at the heart of the Radeon 4890 cool. In our testing idle temps were an astounding 16 degrees Celsius cooler than ATI’s stock cooler. At load, temps were six degrees cooler.
Why such a large discrepancy between idle and load performance? We think it’s because the Zalman fan runs at the same speed at all times, regardless of load. In comparison, the ATI fan is a variable speed fan that cranks the RPMs down when the card is running in 2D mode. With the fan on the Gigabyte card running at the same speed it really has a huge impact on idle temps where the stock ATI fan is running slower.
The sweet part about the Gigabyte fan is its able to keep the GPU cool while also running quietly.
900MHz core clock: For added performance, Gigabyte OCs the graphics core on their GV-R489OC-1GD board to 900MHz. That’s 50MHz higher than stock, or an increase of approximately 6%. In benchmarks, we found the faster core clock bought us an extra 2-4% in performance in games.
Aggressive pricing: With the GV-R489OC-1GD currently selling for $209.99 on Newegg right now, the card is priced pretty well in comparison to the competition. For just $20 more than the cheapest Radeon 4890 listing on Newegg, you get an aftermarket cooler from Zalman, whose VGA coolers often sell for $30-$50 online, and Gigabyte’s 4890 card is factory OC’ed.
Cons
DX11 right around the corner: Rumor has it that ATI’s next-generation DirectX 11 Radeon HD 5800 series cards could launch as soon as next month. If that happens, prices on existing 4890 cards could go down even further. The new DX11 cards could be significantly faster than today’s 4890 GPUs as well.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 6 / 6 ) |