Clash of the Titans - ATI Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295

High-end Rivalry

The subject of rivalries is one that intrigues the masses and stirs up the senses. And there have been some great rivalries of note in recent history. In football, we have Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson; in F1 racing, Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen; and tennis has Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. These are but only a handful of examples. In that same breath, in the realms of graphics card, there's ATI and NVIDIA. The bitterest of enemies, the two have been 'waging war' since the demise of 3dfx.

Since the launch of the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295, NVIDIA has followed up with the GeForce GTX 285 and GeForce GTX 275. Both of which are very quick cards. The GeForce GTX 285 cements NVIDIA's claim as having the fastest single GPU, whereas the GeForce GTX 275 is, on paper, the lovechild of the former and a GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, with specifications that lie between the two.

ATI, on the other hand, has been rather quiet on the high-end front, with the Radeon HD 4890 being their only new offering. Essentially, a super-clocked Radeon HD 4870, it was also the first GPU in the world to be able to clock 1GHz at the core. They also scored another world's first by releasing the Radeon HD 4770, the world's first 40nm GPU, but that's for addressing the mid-range segment. But let's not forget ATI's formidable but rather low-key Radeon HD 4870 X2 single graphics card with dual GPUs which can still pack quite a punch but not as fast NVIDIA's top dog.

Today, we are reigniting the rivalry between the two companies by pitting their best offerings against one another. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 might be the single fastest graphics card available, but if word about an impending Radeon HD 4890 X2 is true, then ATI might still have a say in the matter. Paper specifications suggest that this could be a close fight and to simulate a Radeon HD 4890 X2, we've a pair of Radeon HD 4890 cards in CrossFireX to do battle with a GeForce GTX 295.

The XFX Radeon HD 4890 1GB GDDR5

We've taken a quick look at XFX's factory-overclock and this is the vanilla variant of that card. It has the same reference cooler as its faster sibling, but comes with ATI's reference clock speeds, which means 850MHz at the core and 3900MHz DDR at the memory. It also shares the same outrageous packaging as the XXX Edition and comes with a copy of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. game.

Test Setup

We'll be testing the cards on our usual Vista system which has the following specifications:

Windows Vista SP1 Test System

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
• Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard
• 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
• Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1

The list of cards tested and their driver versions:

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 (ForceWare 185.85)
• 2x ATI Radeon HD 4890 in CrossFire (Catalyst 9.4)
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 (Catalyst 9.3)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 (Forceware 181.20)
• ATI Radeon HD 4890 (8.592.1RC1 provided by ATI)

To add on, the cards were tested using the following benchmarks:

• Futuremark 3DMark06
• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
• Crysis Warhead
• Far Cry 2
• Unreal Tournament 3

Test Results

Test Results (continued)

Final Thoughts

Overall, the results churned out by both setups were pretty close. The twin XFX Radeon HD 4890 cards were able to give the GeForce GTX 295 a run for its money on the extremely graphics-intensive Crysis Warhead. And it was able to whoop the GTX 295 into submission on 3DMark06.

However, the GeForce GTX 295 turned the tables when it came to Vantage, where it scored a HardwareZone.com record of 14721 on the "Performance" preset. That's more than 1000 3DMarks more than what the two XFX Radeon HD 4890 cards could achieve. It was also clearly the faster card on Far Cry 2. In Unreal Tournament though, both the competitors turned out similar results.

While the two cards' performance was pretty similar, there were marked difference in the card's temperature and power consumption readings, and also their overclocking abilities. At 71 degrees Celsius at the core, the Radeon HD 4890 is already a very warm card, and with two in the casing, our test system felt significantly warmer.

Also, these are by no means green cards, and the readings show. The GeForce GTX 295 clocked a maximum power consumption reading of 374W for the entire system, while the pair of XFX Radeon HD 4890 cards showed a much higher power consumption of 424W. The two Radeon HD 4890 cards also recorded a very high idle power draw of 263W. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295, on the other hand, had an idle system power draw of just 179W, which is remarkably lower.

In closing, the benchmarking performance of two Radeon HD 4890 graphics cards in CrossFireX is very competitive with those of a single NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 which generally inched just ahead by a little. Our only gripe with the ATI pair is with the fairly high operating temperatures and rather absurd power consumption figures. To put the numbers in perspective, it should be noted that an idle system power draw of 263W is nearly equivalent to the maximum operating load reading of a pair of Radeon HD 4770 graphics cards in CrossFireX. It should therefore be interesting to see what ATI would do to bring down the operating temperatures and power consumption figures of their high end products.

Because of these two crucial draw backs, it is our opinion that the GeForce GTX 295 remains to be the best high-end solution out there. It might cost about US$50 more, but you do you get your money's worth. Compared to two Radeon HD 4890 cards, a single GeForce GTX 295 has lower power consumption and is more manageable to cool. For the moment, at least, the GeForce GTX 295 is the still the high-end card to beat.

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