ATI Radeon HD 4890 vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on April 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Putting this PhysX Business to Rest
Let me put things in perspective. Remember our Radeon HD 4870/4850 article that went up last year? It was a straight crown-robbing on ATI’s part, NVIDIA had no competitively priced response at the time.
About two hours before the NDA lifted on the Radeon HD 4800 series we got an urgent call from NVIDIA. The purpose of the call? To attempt to persuade us to weigh PhysX and CUDA support as major benefits of GeForce GPUs. A performance win by ATI shouldn’t matter, ATI can’t accelerate PhysX in hardware and can’t run CUDA applications.
The argument NVIDIA gave us was preposterous. The global economy was weakening and NVIDIA cautioned us against recommending a card that in 12 months would not be the right choice because new titles supporting PhysX and new CUDA applications would be coming right around the corner.
The tactics didn’t work obviously, and history showed us that despite NVIDIA’s doomsday warnings - Radeon HD 4800 series owners didn’t live to regret their purchases. Yes, the global economy did take a turn for the worst, but no - NVIDIA’s PhysX and CUDA support hadn’t done anything to incite buyer’s remorse for anyone who has purchased a 4800 series card. The only thing those users got were higher frame rates. (Note that if you did buy a Radeon HD 4870/4850 and severely regretted your purchase due to a lack of PhysX/CUDA support, please post in the comments).
This wasn’t a one time thing. NVIDIA has delivered the same tired message at every single opportunity. NVIDIA’s latest attempt was to punish those reviewers who haven’t been sold on the PhysX/CUDA messages by not sending them GeForce GTS 250 cards for review. The plan seemed to backfire thanks to one vigilant Inquirer reporter.
More recently we had our briefing for the GeForce GTX 275. The presentation for the briefing was 53 slides long, now the length wasn’t bothersome, but let’s look at the content of the slides:
| Slides About... | Number of Slides in NVIDIA's GTX 275 Presentation |
| The GeForce GTX 275 | 8 |
| PhysX/CUDA | 34 |
| Miscellaneous (DX11, Title Slides, etc...) | 11 |
You could argue that NVIDIA truly believes that PhysX and CUDA support are the strongest features of its GPUs. You could also argue that NVIDIA is trying to justify a premium for its much larger GPUs rather than having to sell them as cheap as possible to stand up to an unusually competitive ATI.
NVIDIA’s stance is that when you buy a GeForce GPU, it’s more than just how well it runs games. It’s about everything else you can run on it, whether that means in-game GPU accelerated PhysX or CUDA applications.
Maybe we’ve been wrong this entire time. Maybe instead of just presenting you with bar charts of which GPU is faster we should be penalizing ATI GPUs for not being able to run CUDA code or accelerate PhysX. Self reflection is a very important human trait, let’s see if NVIDIA is truly right about the value of PhysX and CUDA today.
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7Enigma - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Deja vu again, and again, and again. I've posted in no less than 3 other articles how bad some of the conclusions have been. There is NO possible way you could conclude the 275 is the better card at anything other than the 30" display resolution. Not only that, but it appears with the latest Nvidia drivers they are making things worse.Honestly, does anyone else see the parallel between the original OCZ SSD firmware and these new Nvidia drivers? Seems like they were willing to sacrifice 99% of their customers for the 1% that have 30" displays (which probably wouldn't even be looking at the $250 price point). Nvidia, take a note from OCZ's situation; lower performance at 30" to give better performance at 22-24" resolutions would do you much better in the $250 price segment. You shot yourselves in the foot on this one...
Gary Key - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
The conclusion has been clarified to reflect the resolution results. It falls right into line with your thoughts and others as well as our original thoughts that did not make it through the edits correctly.7Enigma - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Yup, I responded to Anand's post with a thank you. We readers just like to argue, and when something doesn't make sense, we're quick to go on the attack. But also quick to understand and appreciate a correction.duploxxx - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Just some thoughts:There is only 1 single benchmark out of 7 where the 275 has better frame rates for 1680 and 1920 resolution against the 4890 and yet your final words are that you favor the 275???? Only in 2560 the 275 is clearly the better choice. Are you already in the year 2012 where 2560 might be the standard resolution of the sales, it is only very recent that the 1680 became standard and even then this resolution is high for global OEM market sales. Your 2560 is not even few % of the market.
I think you have to clarify your final words a bit more with your choice.... Perhaps if we see power consumption, fan noice etc that would be added value to the choice, but for now, TWIMTBP is really not enough push to prefer the card, I am sure the red team will improve there drivers as usual also.
anything else i missed in your review that could counter my thoughts?
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Derek has been caught in the 2560 wins it all no matter what with the months on end of ati taking that cake since the 4870 releasse. No lower resolutions mattered for squat since the ati lost there - so you'll have to excuse his months long brainwashing.Thankfully anand checked in and smacked it out of his review just in time for the red fanboy to start enjoying lower resolution wins while nvidia takes the high resolution crown, which is- well.. not a win here anymore.
Congratulations, red roosters.
duploxxx - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
just as addon, I also checked some other reviews (yes i always read anandtech first as main source of info) and i saw that it is cooler then a 4870 and actually consumes 10% less then a 4870 so this can't be the reason either while the 275 stays at the same 280 power consumption. Also OC parts are already shown GPU above 1000....cyriene - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I would have liked to see some information on heat output and the temperatures of the cards while gaming.Otherwise, nice article.
7Enigma - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
This is an extreme omission. The fact that the 4890 is essentially an overclocked 4870 means with virtually nothing changed you HAVE to show the temps. I still stick by my earlier comment that the Vapo-chill model of the Sapphire 4870 is possibly a better card since it's temps are significantly lower than the stock 4870, while already being overclocked. I could easily imagine that for $50-60 less you could have the performance of the 4890 at cooler temps (by OC'ing the vapochill further).Comon guys, you have to give thought to this!
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Umm, they - you know the AT bosses, don't like the implications of that. So many months, even years, spent on screeching like women about nvidia rebranding has them in a very difficult position.Besides, they have to keep the illusion of superior red power useage, so only after demand will they put up the power chart.
They tried to get away with not, but they couldn't do it.
initialised - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
GPU-z lists the R790 as having a surface area of 282mm2 while the R770 has 256mm2 but both are listed as having the same transistor count.