Radeon 4890 vs 4850

Towermax

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 30, 2006
Messages
196
I just found a 4890 on craigslist for $20 and I'm gonna buy it to replace the 4850 in an older Phenom II quad system.

It's a lot faster on the benchmarks I found, but in real life, can I expect to see significant performance improvements?
 
well depends on overall system, if the cpu is stock, and running at lower res, may not see that much improvment, but if running at 1050 or 1080p type resolution and have the cpu clocked up some, should be quite a good performance jump.

To say overall, the 4850 even when it was released was a bit underpowered, something the 4870 was not, and the 4890 was in its own ballgame of performance. Hope your system is well cooled and good power supply as the 4890 were not known for being efficent, just very well performing.
 
OK, looks like a decent upgrade for the price.

CPU is OC'd to 3.8. System is well-cooled and has a Seasonic Gold 560 power supply. Monitor is only 1680 x 1050, but I'll be getting a 1080p in a bit.
 
Another thing to consider is that most 4850s had 512mb VRam whereas most (all?) 4890s had 1GB VRam. Assuming that is the case, that will certainly be a factor as well.
 
Another thing to consider is that most 4850s had 512mb VRam whereas most (all?) 4890s had 1GB VRam. Assuming that is the case, that will certainly be a factor as well.

You're right--my 4850 has 512MB GDDR3 and the 4890 has 1GB GDDR5--that should make a difference.
 
personally wouldn't bother, those things are furnaces

if you can deal with the heat its not a bad boost for 20$
 
personally wouldn't bother, those things are furnaces

if you can deal with the heat its not a bad boost for 20$

This one will be very hot--it's a Sapphire OC edition. Still, I suppose I can downclock it to normal if necessary. We'll see how the Accelero does on it. I figure it's worth taking a chance for only $20.00.
 
For only $20 it's well worth upgrading. The reference 4850 was only single slot so reached insane temps, I think the dual slot 4870/4890 were slightly better.
 
This one will be very hot--it's a Sapphire OC edition. Still, I suppose I can downclock it to normal if necessary. We'll see how the Accelero does on it. I figure it's worth taking a chance for only $20.00.

well if you have the artic accelero screw downclocking, try to overclock the shit out of it. though there were a lot of later 4890's that overclocked like crap due to the manufactures cheaping out on the VRM's so if this card is definitely working hopefully its one of the first batches that came out that overclocked like beasts. the 4890 is a good upgrade over the 4850, at 1080p you'll notice it even more due to the 1GB of vram.
 
Well worth 20 bucks. Its about the same performance as the EVGA gtx 260-216 core SC card I had. It served me well for years at 1080p on older games. It should be a noticeable upgrade and a fun project adding that Accelero.
 
Lol, yeah, for $20, why wouldn't you go for it? Even if it wasn't an upgrade, I'd pick it up for a spare, or even to resell.
 
$20 is a steal ><
Just do it. I've played with both 4850 512mb, 4850 1GB, and 4890 1GB. There is a noticeable difference.
 
OK, just picked it up. I got it for $20.00 because the fan is starting to rattle. Since I'm putting the Accelero on it, that doesn't matter . . .
 
you got a hell of a deal, i'm still using a 4890 in my backup gaming rig hooked to the hdtv. runs almost everything on 1080p like a champ, I think ffxiv hurt it a bit, but that game hurts my 6970 on a i7 too.

i'm running a 4850 here at work and playing tera at the same res between the two cards is a huge difference.

enjoy the card :D
 
OK, just picked it up. I got it for $20.00 because the fan is starting to rattle. Since I'm putting the Accelero on it, that doesn't matter . . .

lol that was the only reason they sold it for 20 bucks, damn you got a deal and half. enjoy the card, wish i could find deals like that where i am but everyone is still using computers from the mid 90's.
 
4890 competes with gtx 275....I just bought 1 here on forums just for the fun of it. I had 2 XFX ref models in CF back in the day.
 
That is a CRAZY deal for $20. Heck, until last week, that was my primary gaming card. With that thing, I ran Skyrim @ 1680x1050, Ultra settings, @ 45fps. Not bad at all for a 3 year old GPU!

But holy crap, it IS loud, and it IS hot. Full tilt that thing was a space heater that screamed like a banshee. Still love the thing, though. It's now in my secondary box :)
 
It should be a noticeable upgrade and a fun project adding that Accelero.

I installed the Accelero on the 4890 yesterday evening. Everything went smoothly except the VRAM heatsinks were missing. Fortunately, I found an unopened package of Enzotech copper VRAM sinks--forgot that I had them.

Then, installed the card with no fans and it idled at 52C. That's too warm for my taste, so I pulled it out and ziptied two 80mm quiet PWM fans to the Accelero.

Re-installed the card and connected the two fans to the motherboard via a PWM splitter cable. Speedfan controls the fan speed.

Now it idles at 40C with the fans turning at about 1000rpm--and it's nearly silent. I ran Furmark for 1 hour and the max temperature was 69C--and that's with the fans deliberately limited to 1400rpm max.
 
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