Introduction

The HD 4890 is an interesting card. We haven't heard loads about it and the general excitement about the card is quite low. But the main reason we think people aren't that excited about the card is because both they and we know that the card isn't going to be as fast as the dual GPU wielding GTX 295. And this is what most people want, especially when the HD 4800 series of ATI cards have been out for so long.

The HD 4890, though, should do what ATI do best lately; offer pretty good performance at a pretty good price. Originally the card wasn't due to be released till the 9th, but due to companies selling the card early and NVIDIA having the GTX 275 coming out a few days earlier than its original NDA, the launch date for this card has been moved forward.

There's only one way to find out exactly how the HD 4890 shapes up and that's to put it through its paces in our usual benchmark suite. But before we get into that, we'll have a look at the package GIGABYTE has put together and then have a peek at the card itself and the clocks it carries.