Racing Pedigree - ASUS EAH4890 Formula

With ATI's latest Radeon HD 5870 already launched and out the in the wild, the Radeon HD 4890 is looking more and more like last season's flavor. However, the good thing is that the older Radeon 4800 series card will be subjected to price pressure, and this might tilt things in the ASUS EAH4890 Formula's favor.

Secret Formula

It is no secret that ATI's Radeon 4000 series graphics cards have hurt NVIDIA. While NVIDIA concentrates on the high-end, ATI is slowly chipping away at NVIDIA's share in other market segments. According to a report by Jon Peddie Research , ATI's market share has increased four percent in the past two quarters.

This is largely due to the great performance/cost ratio of the ATI cards. Remember the release of the Radeon 4800 series almost a year back? Those cards represented tremendous value for money, forcing NVIDIA to quickly slash prices of their equally new cards in an attempt to better position themselves in the market.

Since then, ATI has expanded the range by offering stripped down versions of the Radeon HD 4800 series as mainstream cards, while NVIDIA seemed content to focus their efforts on creating the fastest single GPU regardless of the cost, while rebranding their older GPUs and passing them off as new mainstream offerings. While it is undeniable that the GeForce GTX 285 was the single most powerful GPU for a while, ATI was not to be outdone and eventually released the Radeon HD 4890.

For all intents and purposes, the Radeon HD 4890 was really a "facelift" of the older HD 4870. It featured higher clock speeds thanks to a retimed chip, new power distribution system, and decoupled capacitors. But perhaps most notably, it was the first GPU to hit clock speeds of 1GHz. Naturally, this garnered the Radeon HD 4890 much attention.

As you can see, the Asus EAH4890 Formula does look as radical as the box art suggests. The packaging also loudly and proudly proclaims that the card is up to 23% cooler. We shall see.

As you can see, the Asus EAH4890 Formula does look as radical as the box art suggests. The packaging also loudly and proudly proclaims that the card is up to 23% cooler. We shall see.

Today, we take a look at the ASUS EAH4890 Formula. The card boasts higher clock speeds than stock versions and its cooler is said to have been inspired by Formula 1 cars. Does it lives up to the high expectations?

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula 1GB GDDR5

First off, let's talk clock speeds. The ASUS EAH4890 Formula is clocked at 900MHz for the core and 4000MHz DDR at the memory. This is quite modest, considering a stock card is clocked at 850MHz for the core and 3900MHz DDR for the memory.

That aside, it is probably the most unique looking card we've seen, thanks to its Formula 1-inspired design. The cooler casing, if you haven't noticed, is shaped to resemble a Formula 1 car. This is not just pure aesthetics, however, as ASUS claims that the design was conceived with aerodynamics in mind and that it improves air flow by up to 7%. Furthermore, the cooler has been given ASUS' proprietary Micro Surface Treatment, which aids heat dissipation by up to 14%. We'll definitely be looking forward to see how cool this card runs.

Here are photos of the card for you to gawk at.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula is one the the oddest looking card we've seen and thanks largely due to the unorthodox Formula 1-inspired cooler.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula is one the the oddest looking card we've seen and thanks largely due to the unorthodox Formula 1-inspired cooler.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula sports the usual twin HDCP-compliant DVI ports and a single 7-pin mini-DIN.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula sports the usual twin HDCP-compliant DVI ports and a single 7-pin mini-DIN.

Like most coolers, the one used in the ASUS EAH4890 Formula has five heat pipes and lots of cooling fins for quick heat dissipation.

Like most coolers, the one used in the ASUS EAH4890 Formula has five heat pipes and lots of cooling fins for quick heat dissipation.

Unlike standard Radeon HD 4890 cards, the ASUS EAH4890 Formula demands a 8 and 6-pin PCIe power connector to power up.

Unlike standard Radeon HD 4890 cards, the ASUS EAH4890 Formula demands a 8 and 6-pin PCIe power connector to power up.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula does away with the usual line of capacitors and opts instead for a single Fujitsu high-capacity 3v-1000uf capacitor.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula does away with the usual line of capacitors and opts instead for a single Fujitsu high-capacity 3v-1000uf capacitor.

Test Setup

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula will be tested on our 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

Having just reviewed the awesome Radeon HD 5870 , we'll be pitting the ASUS EAH4890 Formula against all the other high-end offerings presently available. Obviously, we are most interested in how much better the ASUS card performs against a stock Radeon HD 4890, and also against its competitors from NVIDIA.

The full list of cards and driver versions used:

  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (ATI Driver 8.66 Beta)
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.8)
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 (Catalyst 9.8)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 190.62)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB GDDR3 (ForceWare 190.62)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 896MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 190.62)

The cards were tested using the following benchmarks:

  • Futuremark 3DMark06
  • Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
  • Crysis Warhead
  • Far Cry 2
  • Warhammer: Dawn of War 2

Results - 3DMark06

Given the ASUS EAH4890 Formula's bumped up clock speeds, it was no surprise to see it edging out the reference Radeon HD 4890 on 3DMark06. It was also more than a match for the GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 275, and was only outperformed by the immensely powerful Radeon HD 5870 and GeForce GTX 295. A promising start for the ASUS card, then.

Results - 3DMark Vantage

Coming to 3DMark Vantage, the ASUS EAH4890 Formula continued to outperform the stock Radeon HD 4890, but found itself left behind by both the GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 275. To add on, the difference between the ASUS card and the GeForce GTX 275 wasn't that great. Nevertheless, it is disheartening to see an overclocked card get beaten by a factory stock GTX 275, albeit of a different GPU architecture.

Results - Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2

We've come to real world benchmarking with Crysis Warhead and the ASUS EAH4890 Formula performed predictably. It was about 5% quicker than the bog standard Radeon HD 4890 and was able to go toe-to-toe with the GeForce GTX 275.

The ASUS card did well on Far Cry 2, posting playable frame-rates up till the most demanding setting of 1920 x 1440 with 8x anti-aliasing enabled. It was able to match the GeForce GTX 275 at first, but gradually faded away as the settings became more demanding, especially when 8x anti-aliasing was turned on.

Results - Dawn of War 2

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula redeemed itself brilliantly when it came to Dawn of War 2, clocking the best frame-rates by some margin, beating even the Radeon HD 5870 and GeForce GTX 295. But this is probably due to scaling issues or poor driver optimization rather than the sheer outright power of the ASUS card, since we know that the HD 5870 and GTX 295 are considerably more powerful. This is especially so when we noticed that the ASUS faltered at higher resolutions.

Temperature

The coolest Radeon HD 4890 we have tested thus far is PowerColor's PCS+ HD 4890 which managed a commendable 68 degrees Celsius. The ASUS EAH4890 Formula managed to better that by recording an impressive 60 degrees Celsius, a considerable 17 degrees Celsius improvement over a stock card's 73 degrees Celsius. It's not quite the 23% that ASUS claims, but it's still a very good result.

Power Consumption

As we noted earlier in the review, the ASUS EAH4890 Formula requires both 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors. This led us to believe that power consumption figures will be slightly greater than a reference card, but that's certainly not the case as readings from the ASUS card were nearly identical to that of a stock Radeon HD 4890 despite the overclock on the ASUS.

Overclocking

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula was bundled with ASUS' SmartDoctor overclocking utility. SmartDoctor is a more useful tool compared to the built-in ATI Overdrive for overclocking because it allows you to tweak your GPU's Vcore values, allowing for better overclocking at the core. With it, we managed to attain 1GHz at the core and 4700MHz DDR at the memory. This gave us 5523 3DMarks, representing a good 10% increase in performance.

Too Late to the Game

As a whole, the ASUS EAH4890 Formula is not a bad card. But like in Michael Learns to Rock's hit song "25 minutes", where the band sung about how a man finally realizes he loves a girl and rushes out to find her, only to discover her at the church waiting to get married, the ASUS EAH4890 Formula is a tad late to the market.

The talk of the town now must surely be the recently released Radeon HD 5870, which has certainly stole the limelight. What's more, it is not surprising that most onlookers are now eagerly waiting to see how ATI's other GPUs, the HD 5850 and the HD 5700 series will perform before deciding on their next graphics card purchase. On the upside however, there is a high chance that vendors will revise prices of the older Radeon HD 4800 cards downwards in a bid to boost sales. And to be honest, the Radeon 4800 cards are no slouches themselves, and with a downward revision of price in place, they look to be really good value for money.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula is one of the better Radeon HD 4890 cards out there, but sadly, its arrival has been shadowed by the launch of ATI's new Radeon HD 5870.

The ASUS EAH4890 Formula is one of the better Radeon HD 4890 cards out there, but sadly, its arrival has been shadowed by the launch of ATI's new Radeon HD 5870.

Amongst the other Radeon HD 4890 cards, the EAH4890 Formula is certainly above average. Performance is as we expected, and the card runs significantly cooler compared to stock models thanks to its unique cooler. All in all, we have no complaints with it. The sad thing, however, is that we've been informed by ASUS that this card won't be available locally in Singapore. But for folks reading this elsewhere, expect to pay a little more for the ASUS EAH4890 Formula than you would for other competitive makes.

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