Asus Radeon HD 4890 Voltage Tweak Review

Written by Harry Butler

June 9, 2009 | 10:28

Tags: #hd-4890 #performance #radeon #tested #voltage-tweak

Companies: #asus

Far Cry 2

Publisher: Ubisoft

Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft and it's one of the most hotly-anticipated games of this year. While it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, Far Cry 2 is built on its own in-house engine and has no association to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now.

The game uses DirectX 10.1 to improve anti-aliasing performance and quality. The improvements are made by reading the multisampled depth buffer in a single pass - something that was only introduced officially with DirectX 10.1. However, Ubisoft has also made the enhancements available to Nvidia hardware as well through a DirectX 10 extension.

We used the game's built-in benchmarking tool to measure performance in DirectX 10/10.1 mode - this provided a pretty accurate rundown of how various graphics cards perform and it shows off a lot of the game's special effects. We set every option to its maximum setting and tested at 1,680 x 1,050, 1,920 x 1,200 and 2,560 x 1,600 with various anti-aliasing settings.

Anisotropic filtering is controlled by the game's quality settings and forcing AF from the driver control panel does not have any effect on visual quality or performance.

Asus Radeon HD 4890 Voltage Tweak Review Far Cry 2 - DirectX 10/10.1

Far Cry 2

1,680 x 1,050 0xAA, DirectX 10/10.1, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
    • 81.7
    • 52.0
    • 65.7
    • 52.0
    • 57.8
    • 43.0
    • 57.6
    • 47.0
    • 57.6
    • 47.0
    • 55.4
    • 41.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,680 x 1,050 4xAA, DirectX 10/10.1, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
    • 66.9
    • 52.0
    • 51.0
    • 42.0
    • 50.8
    • 39.0
    • 47.9
    • 37.0
    • 45.2
    • 36.0
    • 45.2
    • 36.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,920 x 1,200 0xAA, DirectX 10/10.1, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
    • 87.5
    • 55.0
    • 64.7
    • 51.0
    • 57.6
    • 48.0
    • 57.6
    • 48.0
    • 53.4
    • 41.0
    • 50.0
    • 39.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,920 x 1,200 4xAA, DirectX 10/10.1, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
    • 64.1
    • 50.0
    • 48.0
    • 35.0
    • 45.9
    • 36.0
    • 43.2
    • 34.0
    • 42.8
    • 35.0
    • 42.8
    • 35.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

2,560 x 1,600 0xAA, DirectX 10/10.1, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
    • 67.5
    • 52.0
    • 47.0
    • 40.0
    • 42.1
    • 32.0
    • 41.6
    • 34.0
    • 41.6
    • 34.0
    • 40.0
    • 31.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

2,560 x 1,600 4xAA, DirectX 10/10.1, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
    • 39.5
    • 26.0
    • 35.3
    • 27.0
    • 32.6
    • 25.0
    • 30.3
    • 23.0
    • 29.0
    • 23.0
    • 29.0
    • 23.0
0
10
20
30
40
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum


As the Asus Radeon HD 4890 is a stock clocked card out of the box, it performs identically to any other reference HD 4890. In Far Cry 2 the HD 4890 is marginally faster than the GTX 275 when anti aliasing is disabled, but slower than Nvidia's price point competitor when you turn up the AA.
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