Introduction

We've already looked at one HD 4890 to see how it goes against a number of single GPU cards on the market and since the Sapphire model is quite similar to the GIGABYTE model, with the only difference being the fact that Sapphire has chosen to utilize the stock clocks, we will do something a bit different in our comparisons.

What we'll do is see how the card competes solely against the HD 4870. Compared to our other review, this gives us a clearer picture of the kind of performance improvements we've seen over the last model from ATI.

This ultimately gives us a better idea of just how hard ATI have been working to offer a new card that offers better performance than the previous model we saw. The HD 4870 has clearly had a good run and due to the amount of time it's been out we hope that there are some good performance improvements that give users of the HD 4870 a reason to upgrade.

As usual, though, before we get into the benchmarking side of things we'll take the time to have a look at the package that Sapphire has put together while also having a closer look at the card itself.