The Card

Having a look at the HD 4890 for the first time, there isn't really anything new to see. What you ultimately notice is that the card looks very similar to the HD 4870 that's been out for a while now.

(Click the above image for the large version)

The particular cooler is the reference one that we will see most HD 4890 cards using at the moment. Of course, GIGABYTE has added its own sticker to the card which shows the brand and model.

(Click the above image for the large version)

(Click the above image for the large version)

When we have a look around the card it doesn't come as much of a surprise that there isn't much different between the HD 4890 and HD 4870. The back of the card has two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors; while closer to the front of the card we have two Crossfire connectors that let us run up to three of these cards.

(Click the above image for the large version)

It's interesting to see that ATI hasn't chosen to implement a native HDMI port on the I/O side of things, since we've seen NVIDIA do it more and more with cards like the GTS 250 and GTX 295. What we do have is two Dual-Link DVI connectors and an S-Video port. Across the top of the card we have a number of vents which is pushing the hot air out.

Specifications

It doesn't come as much of a surprise; GPU-Z is having a few issues with the HD 4890. But no doubt this will be fixed once we have an updated version of GPU-Z after the card is released.

The default core on the HD 4890 is 850MHz which is 100MHz up on the HD 4870. GIGABYTE has upped this again and we see the core coming in at 900MHz. The 1GB of GDDR5 memory here comes in at 4000MHz QDDR, while stock is 3900MHz QDR which is up on the 3600MHz QDR that we see from the HD 4870.

GPU-Z results are all over the place and I actually double and triple checked with GIGABYTE to find the proper clocks on this card as we're seeing a whole lot of numbers. So to make it simple, the core is 900MHz and the 1GB of GDDR5 memory is 4000MHz QDR.