14 DAY TRIAL // One of the main features of AMD's latest RV790-based Radeon HD 4890 graphics card is that it can provide users with impressive overclocking room. This is one fact that has been taken into consideration by many overclocking enthusiasts out there, who have already gotten their hands on the new card and put it through its paces. On that note, we are already getting reports of the card being pushed to an impressive 1.2GHz for the GPU's core speed. The overclocking was done using an extreme cooling solution.
A fellow writer for Vr-zone has already posted the results of his overclocking experience with the Radeon HD 4890 graphics card that he recently bought. According to his post, through some unorthodox tweaking of the card he managed to boost the core speed of the RV790 graphics processing unit to a stable 1130Mhz for the core with the voltage at 1.425. He managed to keep the card cooled to around -40 degrees by using some leftover liquid nitrogen, enabling him to push the performance of the card beyond its factory settings.
Although the result is impressive, it has already been overshadowed by that of Polish overclocker Xoqolatl, who managed to push the Radeon card to an impressive 1.2GHz, enabling him to score P15406 points in 3DMark Vantage. The test system also included an Extreme Intel Core i7 965 processor and 6GB of DDR3 memory. The overclocking was done by setting the core voltage to 1.425V and using dry ice cooling.
As you have probably figured it out, the Radeon HD 4890 is a nice overclockable graphics card, but it takes some experience and some tools in order to enable the GPU core speed increase. However, even if you are not an overclocking enthusiast, AMD will allow you to push the limits of your high-end GPU through the integrated ATI Overdrive utility. This utility is, however, limited, as it will only allow you to push the frequency to a maximum of 1000MHz.
