Vista Tutorial - Ati 4890 xfx

Hi,

I have recently bought a new monitor that is 1080p and figure I am going to need a new graphics card, something a lot bigger.

I am considering the ATI 4890 XFX edition and just using 1 or crossfire later when I purchase a new PSU.

The websites (both XFX and ATI) say 500W minimum and 600W for crossfire. I don't want to crossfire just use a singular card. In theory I should be fine but I hear a lot of people say these bigger cards need a lot more W's etc. So my question is with my setup (click my system drop-down box) would a 4890 XFX run fine, I know my PSU is low (600W) but I am planning on getting a 800-1000W later.

Since its a relatively new card I haven't been able to find much information on it, like others that use it with a certain psu etc.

OR If I cant run a 4890 I guess just Cross Firing my existing 4850.

Thanks,

I have an XFX 4890 and it runs great with no problems on my system. And I only have a 550W power supply. See my system specs.

You shouldn't need anything else more than a good 650-700watt power supply for a crossfire setup with that card.

PS - have a look at this link - 2-Card SLI Question. In it I talk about the 4890 power requirements.

Thank-you so much! such a quick reply and a knowledgeable one.
I am checking out the link now and am finding it very interesting.

Again thanks a lot!

You'll have no problems with a single 4890 and that toughpower of yours.

Two 4850's will equal/outperform a single 4890 plus it's a much cheaper option.

However if your current 4850 is only a 512mb model, I'd go for a 1GB 4890. My cards are only 512mb and I'm really starting to find the 512 are quite limiting.

I'd personally go for a 4890, save the cash, upgrade the PSU and then crossfire it with another 4890 down the track.

Yeah it is only a 512mb 4850, I will go the 4890.

Thanks for your suggestion!

good choice let us see some benchmarks from it

I just looked up a benchmark between a few cards and that included XFX 4890 and Sapphire 4890, the Sapphire basically beat the XFX in every test so I am thinking of getting a Sapphire card. Also it is a bit cheaper.

(Source: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...re-xfx-16.html)

I want to run mainly Crysis and Fallout 3

It says it is a Sapphire Atomic, the place where I am buying it from just says:
Sapphire HD4890 1GB this is just a regular one, I cant get any benchmarks for the Non-Atomic Edition, what do you recommend ?

A normal Sapphire 4890 or XFX 4890

I have the ASUS EAH 4890 1GB DDR5 card and so far I've only had 2 issues...

1: The MASSIVE power requirements; it wants 2x12V rails totalling 40A
2: Cooling; Has much the same cooler as the older 8800GTS does and even with extra fans, it'll go into auto cooling if I play too long on an FPS game in max res...

Other than that, I'm impressed with this card as I have been an avid nVidia user for many years...

For the price, I paid $329 CAD, it's a dang good card so far... I would have paid around 2x that for comparable nVIDIA... My next build may see 2 of these Crossfired...

ASUS at the moment doesn't have ANYTHING about it on their website... I installed ATI drivers at first and it was fine... After that, I used the CD that came with the card and used those drivers and performance went up even more...

A 3DMark2006 run thru gave me a base of 15,449 marks without any tweaking to the system or program...