Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel i7 920 @ 3.8GHz (190MHz x 20)

Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P (Supplied by Noctua)

Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE EX58-UD5 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Memory: 3 X 2GB OCZ Technology PC-12800 DDR-3 8-8-8-24 (OCZ3G1600LV6GK)

Hard Disk(s): Western Digital 300GB Velicorapter (Supplied by Western Digital)

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista SP1 64-Bit

Drivers: ForceWare 182.06, Catalyst 9.2, Catalyst 8.14.10.0647 (HD 4890)

Utilizing RivaTuner we took the time to increase the GPU, Shader and Memory clock. Bumping the card up 10MHz - 15MHz at a time and running a loop of 3DMark Vantage in between lets us find a sweet spot for clocks.

Based on a GTX 200 series product we have a shader clock unlike the HD 4890; in this case we chose to keep it linked (an option under RivaTuner) with the core, meaning both increased together.

What we ultimately ended up with was pretty impressive. As you can see above, the core was moved from 633MHz to 715MHz, the shader clock from 1404MHz to 1585MHz and the 896MB of GDDR3 memory from 2268MHz DDR to 2444MHz DDR.

These increases should give us a nice little increase in performance. To find out just how much, though, we're going to run through a number of our benchmarks today. So let's get stuck into it and find out what exactly is going on here.

3DMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.1

Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmarkvantage/

Buy It Here

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

Straight away we see a good increase in both the P and X settings under 3DMark Vantage. Hopefully we see these healthy increases translate to real world games as well.