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Why does my HD 4870 outperform my HD 4890?

Emphacy

Emphacy

Emphacy

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Hey guys.
I'm somewhat disappointed after recieving my HD 4890 today. I purchased this one as my 4870 had overheating issues. Probably due to the cooler.

In any case, I benched my 4870 before installing the 4890. They are both of similar spec. 1GB XFX Graphics Cards. The 4890 has an extra 100MHz Core Clock and an extra 75MHz bus speed.

If you look at my benchmarks using 3DMARK Vantage, the 4870 outperforms the 4890. I even used the Crysis Bench Utility, and I get around 5-10FPS more on the 4870!

3DMARKResults.png


Has anyone got any idea what's going on? Maybe something to do with the AMD CCC, although I doubt it. Tried to OC the card too, game crashed had to manual restart. Reviews however, say the 4890 get's about 10% higher FPS.

Thanks much.
 
Whilst it shouldn't be necessary, have you tried removing and reinstalling the latest drivers?

If you want a comparison, here is a Warhead benchmark for my 4890 SC (950/1050)
4890crysis.jpg
 
I did a driver install last night, again. It has the latest drivers and latest AMD CCC. It doesn't make any sense.

The card also seems to skip frapes every now and again, feels kinda Jumpy and less smooth too. If I OC the core it becomes unstable and crashes, I overclocked the memory bus to 1200MHz and it's working fine but still doesn't beat my 4870 on frame rates.
 
Here's the GPU-Z Screenshots. Left 4870 Right 4890. Look at both of their core and bus speeds. This surely indicates a performance increase.

CPU-ZGPU-Z.png


Okay now here's my Crysis Bench of the 4890. It's got no AA, low resolution, runs on DX9 because DX10 gives me even worse FPS and 64 BIT. The 4870 gives me around 10FPS more than this.

CrysisGPUBench.png


Thanks for your time guys, if you have any idea please just let me know, this just literally makes no sense what so ever. How can you buy a card with higher specs and get worse performance?
 
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what does that extra die space and those extra transistors do on the HD 4890, that aren't there on the HD 4870 :confused:
 
Gashman said:
what does that extra die space and those extra transistors do on the HD 4890, that aren't there on the HD 4870 :confused:
Click to expand...

The 4980 core was overhualed and the micro circuitry was redesigned as well to give better performance clock for clock, lower temps and if I remember the 4890 was an overclocking beast. I'm guessing all those changes meant the die was always going to be a little bigger.

I can't think of what might be causing it to give worse performance. Perhaps try disabling Powerplay just in case the drivers are clocking the card down while under load for some reason. Also by using MSI afterburner you can see your GPU usage while your card is under load so try running that when Vantage is running and see what you get.
 
Ok that's a mystery :eek:

Have you tried lowering the clocks on the 4890 to match the 4870 just to see if it's being pushed too hard?
 
I take it you installed a different driver with the 4890, as the version is different in the gpu-z screen & the 4890 has OpenCL available.

You don't have any settings forced in the CCC do you ?
 
MoodyB said:
I take it you installed a different driver with the 4890, as the version is different in the gpu-z screen & the 4890 has OpenCL available.

You don't have any settings forced in the CCC do you ?
Click to expand...

It's been upgraded to the AMD Catalyst Control Center 2. It's a lot different from the old ATI CCC. I've played around with the settings, turned off adaptive AA etc, still getting nothing better.

Also, why do I get better FPS using DX9 than DX10, if anyone knows. This is completely baffling and is starting to annoy me.
 
Alpherah said:
DX10 introduces some new shiny things, doesnt make games run faster.
Click to expand...

The actual point in new DX revisions is to get things running faster while maintaining the same, or better graphical quality. It doesn't always happen that way, the way it should work is that, games can/will run faster using exactly the same configurations, leaving some overhead to incorporate more features.
 
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I returned back to the original ATI CCC and had all the settings exactly like I did on the 4870. Makes no difference, I can't turn off Powerplay, it's hardware powered, would need a hacked BIOS to change it.

I think that's why the card is so... Stuttery. It doesn't provide very smooth gameplay, and it doesn't overclock very well either, after 15MHz more on the Core Clock it crashes my whole system.

I tried increasing the GPU Clock Timer from 700mV to 800mV to 900mV. It just crashes the system too. The 4890 is suppose to outperform the 5850 in some cases, but when it's struggling to beat my 4870 on frame rates, theres something wrong.

Maybe when my Q6600 arrives it may make a difference, but as a whole, none of this makes any sense what so ever. I may even resort to the old drivers, but that may not make a difference either.

Well, guess a working 4890 is better than an overheating 4870 which you can't use for more than 10mins. Can't say it was worth £80 though.
 
MoodyB said:
Try this, but set all 3 pairs of clock values to be the same :

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=117633
Click to expand...

You sir are excellent. I tried this yesterday, but for some reason it didn't work haha, (probably CCC2) anyways tried it again today and it worked.

PowerPlay is now off and the stuttering has gone, still only getting 40FPS though, which is 5FPS lower on average than the 4870.

I'll see if I can play with those voltages in that profile and try and overclock it a little bit further, see what I can get out of it. I'm assuming that it becomes unstable after so many MHz because the Voltage is locked.

Hopefully me editing this 'profile' like in your link will fix it, thanks much.
 
Glad it helped.

Try MSI Afterburner or Sapphire Trixxx ( there's a beta version to be found on google ) to see if either of them will allow voltage control on your 4890.
 
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