Diamond 4890PE51G ATI Radeon HD 4890 GDDR5 1024MB PCIE Video Card

Comment: The ATI 4890 is a great card. It performs equal to the Nvidia GTX275 while being cheaper. It is also very overclockable, with some models reaching 900MHz-1GHz.
It can also play Crysis maxed out at very high & AA at 1280x1024 with good frame rates. It also runs fairly cool - 50'C at idle (in a fairly warm 80'F room), and goes to around the high 70s'C at load.

My main complaint is that the card's fan is a bit noisy when overclocked and at load. At idle, it's fairly quiet, but at load you can definitely hear it through the computer case (my computer is about 2 feet away from me).

If you don't mind the additional noise, this is a great gaming card.

Comment: Got this as a replacement for my 9800GX2 which died from broken heart :)
This cuts through butter compared to my old card - where I couldn't play Crysis on 1680 x 1050 on either settings this runs almost perfectly on "enthusiast" settings with AA x8 and 1680 x 1050 resolution on my old Q6600 OC @3.0 GHz.
Card is also very quiet and cool compared to my old 9800GX2 which I appreciate a lot! Also, like the power connectors do not face the case lid as it does on Nvidia and newer ATi cards (such as the 5000 series).

System config: Q6600 OC @3.0GHz, 4GB 800MHz Corsair (2x 2GB), 160GB Intel SSD X-25, Sapphire Radeon 4890 1GB.

Comment: I have to admit, this card is blazingly fast, but being a noob, I didn't know I was going to have to upgrade my power supply - it requires *two* connections from the power supply. The card also covers up my only other PCI slot, so I'm going to have to get rid of it (didn't think about that beforehand) - I don't think it's *that* much faster than single slot cards, but we'll see (I just ordered one).

About Linux - I use OpenSuSE x86_64 and sometimes boot to XP. It seems like ATI is having some trouble with its linux drivers (all you Ubuntu users take note!) because I notice some flakiness: say, when I exit ut2004 (in Linux) the whole system will freeze for 30 - 45 seconds! Then all is fine. It is fast and I can max out graphics, tho. Another thing, sometimes I can't get the auto-monitor-save feature to turn off after I've been away from the kbd for a long time - it doesn't get "stuck" this way often, but it suggests to me there are troubles at ATI getting the drivers just right. (I notice they've upgraded their drivers on their website several times in the last few months - more evidence.) So it's prolly back to NVidia for me, say, a 9800 1GB and I think that's *almost* as fast as the HD4890 (though I might not be able to do 1920x1200_32bit - we'll see) and I'll be able to plug my scanner back into the PCI slot that gets uncovered when I pull the HD4890.

Anyone want to buy a very-slightly-used HD4980?

Comment: The graphics are great, its easy to install and it looks good when using a clear case.

Comment: This is my first ever time at using a Radeon card and I was surprised by the jump in performance and quality with my upgrade from a 8800gts. Though the 8800gts has been out a couple of years it still surprised my none the less to have such a boost. I recently built a new rig which is as follows X58SO Motherboard, Core i7 920, 6 gigs of Corsair Dominator Ram and Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit. I started out with my 8800gts at first but there was not much difference in gameplay or performance. I was still only getting about ten to twenty frames per second in Crysis. My 3d mark 06 score was still around ten thousand or so. The price for this card was just right and as it gets lower I plan on getting a second one.

My first issue with installation was having to move around a lot of my cables and squeezing the card in. It took awhile to get it where I wanted but with a little time and patience I got it in there. The problem being how long the card is and the thickness of it. Upon my purchase I really didn't think about the width since I was use to the fatness of my 8800gts. I can imagine fitting a second inside might be an issue since it takes two six pin PCI express connectors for power and that is basically all I have on my 620 watt Corsair power supply. Other than installation I had no other problems getting it in my case.

My next problem was with the catalyst drivers that I could not get to install. Basically I had to uninstall and reinstall until I got it working which sounds goofy to do but it worked. I can't even get my drivers updated without doing it the same way since the first time I get an error message and if there is a problem I uninstall and reinstall and everything is fine. I like nvidia better for updates and I never ever had a problem getting drivers to work.

Overall this card is great and I would say far by my favorite. It comes clocked at about 850mhz but comes with software to overclock that makes it a little simpler. I got it up to about 975 running stable without getting to hot and not causing programs to freeze also there is artifacting in certain games when set too high. As of right now I really just left the settings on normal for now as far as overclocking and have no issue with heat or noise. If you do overclock you will probably have to crank the fan up manually and usually around forty percent or so it gets loud.

I noticed that playing Empire Total War was a disaster when I first installed this card and it simply would not play. I had a lot of problems with freeze ups and crashing. I never had this issue with my nvidia card and from research it sounds like it happens to people a lot. So far as of now with updates to the game and card I can play with only minimal crashes. With my 8800gts I was getting ten to twenty frames per second in Empire but now I get anywhere from sixteen to fifty which is a fantastic performance boost that really surprised me. I play Crysis with settings maxed out on very high getting anywhere from fifteen to twenty five frames per second. Keep in mind this is before any overclocking or anything going on. My score in 3dmark 06 is somewhere in the fourteen thousand range so I am pretty happy right now since I have not overclocked anything on my computer yet.

On a final note if you haven't upgraded your video card for awhile you will be happy with this purchase. It is great to go back to old games I had problems running and now seeing them run in all their glory. It really makes me appreciate PC gaming. If you get this card hopefully you won't have the issues I had with installation.