Sapphire HD 4890 ATOMIC

Zitat

Temperatures are absolutely fantastic on the ATOMIC, and that's even more impressive once you factor in the pre-overclocking on the card and how quiet the cooler is.

Our guess was that Sapphire had bumped up the voltage - and wattage, therefore - on the card to hit the specified core frequency of 1,000MHz. The power-draw numbers bear this out to a very small degree, we suppose, as it draws 9W more than a default-clocked card. The provision of an eight-pin connector is more about Sapphire playing it safe, it would seem.

The core's already at a heady frequency so we didn't expect much more. Our overclocking testing, which tends to be conservative, concluded with some interesting numbers. Remember that the card ships with 1,000MHz engine and 4,200MHz memory frequencies, but we managed to ramp these up to 1,020MHz core and a whopping 4,920MHz memory - the highest we've ever seen.

Inevitably, we're drawn on to the thorny subject of price. Expecting it to come in at £250, which is £50 more-expensive than an already-overclocked Sapphire HD 4890 and dearer than the faster HD 4850 X2 2,048MB, it doesn't represent great value.