Final Thoughts

Compared to the HD 4870, we see that the HD 4890 gives us a nice boost in performance. Having a look at the other cards, however, and the picture isn't so clear. Compared to the GTX 265 the performance is a bit up and down, depending on the game.

Breaking it down, we ultimately see the card does a pretty good job against the GTX 260. PT Boats performance finds it very close; CINEBENCH performance is up; WIC and Warhead performance trails slightly; FC2 performance is up and so is Clear Sky and Left 4 Dead.

We know that the card isn't designed to compete against the GTX 285 in the performance department; this is known because NVIDIA is releasing a GTX 275 to battle the HD 4890 which is going to come in cheaper than the GTX 285, as you would expect.

It's nice to see that come launch day GIGABYTE has offered an overclocked card with an extra few MHz on the core and memory. As for the bundle, we've got everything we need and while it would have been nice to see a full version game in the bundle, it doesn't come as a surprise that GIGABYTE hasn't included one. We're seeing more and more companies not include a game to help keep costs down.

Pricing is going to be the most important aspect of this card; we should see the HD 4890 come in at around the $250 US mark and this is a bit more expensive than the GTX 260, but this is also a launch price.

Deciding which card to buy is going to be a tough one and the performance between the two are a bit all over the place. What you do get with the ATI offering, though, is regular driver updates and with the HD 4890 being the most recent card from ATI there's no doubt that this is going to be the main card that the Catalyst driver team concentrates on for a while to come.