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
The Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack: Finally, a Major Title
Unreal Tournament 3. Metacritic gives it an 83 for “Generally favorable reviews” and NVIDIA released a PhysX mod pack for it last year. Now we’re getting somewhere.
The mod pack consists of three levels that use GPU accelerated PhysX. The rest of the game is left unchanged. You can run these levels without GPU acceleration, but they’re much slower.
The three levels are HeatRay, Lighthouse and Tornado. Guess what the PhysX does in Tornado?
Ben and I played HeatRay together (aw, cute). First the PhysX enabled level with GPU acceleration turned off, then with it turned on and then the standard level that doesn’t use any GPU accelerated PhysX at all.
Turning the PhysX acceleration on made a huge difference, we both agreed. The game was much faster, much more playable. The most noticeable PhysX effect was hail falling from the sky, and lots of it. You could blow up signs in the level but the hail was by far the most noticeable part. Note that I said noticeable, not desirable.
See all of the white pellets? Yeah, that's what PhysX got us in UT3.
Playing the normal version of the HeatRay map was far more fun for both of us. The hail was distracting. Each of the hundreds of pellets hit the ground and bounced off in a physically accurate manner, but in doing so it sounded like I was running through a tunnel full of bead curtains suspended from the ceiling. Not to mention the visual distraction of tons of pellets hitting the ground all of the time. Ben and I both liked the level without the hail. The point of the hail? Not to make the level cooler, but rather to truly stress the PPU/GPU - particles are one of the most difficult things to do on the CPU thanks but work very well on the GPU. This wasn’t a fun level, this was a benchmark.
Tornado was the turning point for us. As the name implies, there’s a giant tornado flying through this capture the flag level. The tornado is physically accurate, if you shoot rockets at it, they fly around and get sucked into the funnel or redirected depending on their angle of incidence. It’s neat.
The tornado sucks up everything around it but if you’re looking to relive Wizard of Oz fantasies I’ve got bad news: you are immune from its sucking power. You just stay on the ground and lose health. Great.
Ben’s take on the tornado level? “It was neat”. I agreed. Not compelling enough for me to tattoo PhysX on my roided up mousing-arm, but the most impressive thing we’d seen thus far.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
294 Comments
View All Comments
Hauk - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
Congrats ATI, the 4890 is a strong performer! So much chatter about what constitutes rebadging; at the end of the day it's performance that matters. 4890 does a great job for the money.The GTX 275 performs well but lacks excitement IMO. Nothing surprising or exciting; we've already seen a 240 shader enabled gpu on a 260 style interface (x2). If anything, the 285 receives strong competition from both 4890 and 275. Makes little sense to remain at it's price point. It's price should be $300.
Times are tight. Cheers to competition...
slickr - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I can't believe how biased anandtech has become.I've checked all other review sites and in all the GTX275 was winning by a pretty big margin, here it actually looses to the HD4890.
Now I'm not a fanboy for either, I've had 2 nvidia graphic cards and 2 ATI cards, the current one is ATI, but this bias thing can't go un-noticed.
Some investigators must be summoned to deal with anandtech, this has been going for quite a while now.
z3R0C00L - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
I see the difference.. those "other reviews" used the Catalyst 9.3 drivers.Anandtech, HardOCP and Firingsquad used the new 9.4 Beta drivers.
No bias on Anandtech's part. Rather a bias from those other sites who used the new nVIDIA BETA driver but not the ATi one that has proper support for the 4890.
B3an - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I dont normally take notice of comments like this on here, but it does seem a little like it. It's as if NV have pissed off Anandtech with there dirty tactics (understandable), and Anandtech are being a little bias because of this.JarredWalton - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
I've looked at three reviews (FiringSquad, THG, and HardOCP - also Xbitlabs, but they didn't have the GTX 275 in their results). I'm not quite sure what horribly biased and inaccurate results we're supposed to have, as most of the tests are quite similar to ours. Two sites - HardOCP and FiringSquad - essentially end up as a tie. THG favors the 275, at least at lower resolutions and without 4xAA, but then several of the games they test we didn't use, and vice versa. (The 4970 also beats the 275 there if you run 4xAA 2560x1600.)Obviously, we had a lengthy rant on CUDA and PhysX and discussed the usefulness of those features (conclusion: meh), but with all the marketing in that area it was something that was begging to be done. Pricing, availability, and drivers are still areas you need to look at, but it's really a very close race.
If you have reviews that show very different results than what I'm seeing, post the name of the site rather than making vague claims like, "I've checked all other review sites and in all the GTX275 was winning by a pretty big margin, here it actually looses to the HD4890."
SkullOne - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
That's different then what I've seen. I dunno what sites you visit but all of the ones I've been to show them just about neck and neck or the 4890 just edging out the 275.Personally I give the edge to the 4890 due to it's high overclockability.
SkullOne - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
That's different then what I've seen. I dunno what sites you visit but all of the ones I've been to show them just about neck and neck or the 4890 just edging out the 275.Personally I give the edge to the 4890 due to it's high overclockability.
Spoelie - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
p=2 As we can clearly see, in the cards we *r*estedp=11 particles are one of the most difficult things to do on the CPU *thanks*
Drivers? test table says 8.12 hotfix but we're at 9.3/9.4 now...
Yojimbo - Thursday, April 2, 2009 - link
First you say you aren't concerned about the 4890 being a rebadge because at the end of the day it's performance that matters, and then you said the GTX 275 lacks excitement because "we've already seen a 140 shader enabled gpu on a 260 style interface (x2)," whatever the significance of already seeing that is.Aren't these contradictory statements?
SiliconDoc - Thursday, April 23, 2009 - link
Of course it's contradictory, it's a red rooster statement. Then the 3m they use to just crank a few more mhz is the rework.. LOLPay homage to the red and hate green and spew accordingly with as many lies as possible or you won't fit in here - been like that for quite some time. Be smug and arrogant about it, too, and never amdit your massive errors - that's how to do it.
Make sure you whine about nvidia and say you hate them in as many ways as possible, as well - be absolutely insane mostly, that's what works - like screaming they can take down nvidia when the red rooster shop has been losing a billion a year on a billion in sales.
Be an opposite man.
Of course it's contradictory. Duhh.. they're insane man - they are GONERS.