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ATI Radeon HD 4890 in CrossfireX |
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HAWX, Power Consumption, Conclusion
Tom Clancy’s HAWX:
A fighter pilot game from Ubisoft featuring satellite mapped terrains, AI assistance and Direct X 10.1 support.
 
 
Performance differences:
Firstly, although it may seem as if DirectX 10 is performing horribly, it is actually working quite a bit harder than DirectX 9, due to the inclusion of higher quality shadows, sun shafts, and Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO). Combined, these produce noticeably better rendering, although obviously with a performance hit.
Despite this, the 4890 takes it in its stride. Average frame rates never dipped below 40 frames per second. Two GPU’s in CrossFireX delivered an average 30% boost, which crept out to an average 44% boost when helped along by an extra GHz of CPU speed. DirectX 9 with 4xAA peaked at a ridiculous 244 frames per second in this overclocked multi-GPU configuration, coming back into the atmosphere slightly to average an impressive 116fps. That’s what I call high resolution gaming!
Power Consumption:
 
 
Cool’n’Quiet provides a handy 9% power saving at standard clock speeds. Unfortunately the BIOS used for testing didn’t allow Cool’n’Quiet to be enabled with overclocked settings. The 4890’s idle power load can be roughly estimated from looking at the differences in idle power consumption. Accurate readings are hard to infer due to the 850W power supply in use, which is clearly not being pushed very hard, hence its efficiency will suffer. Nevertheless, a figure of between 70 and 80W is a reasonable estimate, and if an arbitrary 80% power supply efficiency is assumed (giving a figure of 64W from 80W), 60W sounds likely.
Conclusion:
ATI’s latest GPU is clearly more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It includes more memory and clocks it faster, whilst also ramping up the standard core frequency. At around AU$370, it’s not a whole lot more expensive than its older brother, and from other reviews around the web, the performance gains relative to the 4870 seem to be in the margin of 5 to 10%.
The Phenom II X3 720BE is quite simply a winner. It has the extra core advantage over a dual for a boost in multi-threaded apps, but more frequency headroom than a quad, especially for us mere mortals who mainly use water or air cooling! Add in the possibility of getting that fourth core unlocked and it’s pretty obvious why it’s made such a splash since release.
Thanks to AMD Australia for one of the 4890’s, and for the CPU. Look out for a Phenom II shootout on OCAU in the near future, as well as a GPU battle between the 4670, 4770, and 4890.
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