XFX Radeon HD 4890

XFX Radeon HD 4890 review

Is this the greatest graphics card ever conceived? In historical terms, it's certainly up there with the very best including favourites from yesteryear such as Nvidia's astonishing return to form with the 16-pipe GeForce 6800 after the catastrophic GeForce FX series. Then there's the GeForce 256, the graphics card that coined the term GPU and marked the beginning of modern 3D era. Stiff competition, then, but the Radeon HD 4800 series really is up there. As it happens, the 4800 was AMD's own return from the brink after the calamitous Radeon HD 2900 and the mediocre 3800. But more than that, it was the thinking man's GPU. Not the fastest you could buy, perhaps. But easily the most efficient performance GPU in terms of both power consumption and return on investment. Yes, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 200 cards were quicker. But nowhere near as much as you'd expect given the added cost and complexity.That was then. Does this 4890 board from XFX still make sense today? Features wise, it's at an obvious disadvantage. This is a DX10 chipset lost in a DX11 world. Firstly, that means it lacks support for hardware tessellation and therefore the massively increased geometric detail we're expecting from upcoming games. At least, that's the theory.