ATI's Radeon HD 4890 Vs. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 275

Not really. But the point is that both GPUs provide amazing performance, with a slight advantage going to Nvidia in raw performance benchmarking.

To sum up in a word the graphics that both cards produced: Wow!

Both were installed on the same system -- a customized PC outfitted with a motherboard from Gigabyte Technology, an AMD Phenom II x4955 processor and 3.25-GB 1,066MHz memory.

Geekbench 2.1 benchmark scoring was performed on both cards. Geekbench taxes and measures system resources, including the graphics card. The Geekbench score was higher for the system with the Nvidia card installed: 5,933 vs. 5,096 with the ATI card.

Reviewers also used a benchmark test specifically for graphics testing called FurMark. FurMark is an OpenGL benchmark that stresses and tests the stability of a graphics card. Again, Nvidia received a higher score: 4,760 vs. 3,666 for the ATI card. When testing with FurMark, the higher the score, the more powerful the graphics system.

However, let's give the ATI Radeon its due. Many argue that it simply performs better when it comes to DirectX 10. The ATI CrossFireX technology also is an exciting plus for gamers, as it offers up to quad GPU scaling.

We felt the management utility that comes with the Nvidia card is a bit more feature-rich than what comes with the ATI drivers. Using ATI's Catalyst Control Center, a user can set up the display configuration without needing to go into the Windows Display settings, can set advanced 3-D settings and can configure video playback.

Nvidia's management utility, the Nvidia Control Center, allows for tasks such as optimizing the display, configuring 3-D, video and television, much like ATI's utility. However, there also are options for multi-GPU configurations and a feature called Gigabyte Gamer HUD lite. This allows a user to adjust the voltage of the graphics card and the working frequency of the GPU, shader and video memory for some real granular fine-tuning.

Both cards support PCI Express 2.0. We connected each using a six-pin PCI Express to four-pin Molex cable. These cables are really handy if you run out of PCI E ports on a power supply. One difference with the location of the PCI E ports on both cards -- the Nvidia card has both ports on the side facing front when the card is installed and the side panel of the chassis is open. The ATI's ports are on the back of the card. The Nvidia port location makes it a bit easier to get the PCI E cables connected. Nvidia seemed to keep in mind that these cards would be used in a lot of custom systems. Custom system enthusiasts usually have loads of components installed, so the convenience of not having to navigate through a lot of wiring with the ports facing out is a plus.

The GeForce GTX 275 is integrated with 896 MB GDDR3 memory. It supports two DVI-I connectors as well as HDTV output (with the use of an optional adapter). It also can support HDCP, or High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection. This feature allows users to view content protected by HDCP, which is a digital content protection technology developed by Intel.

Hardware requirements for the GeForce GTX include a 500-watt or greater power supply with minimum 12V current rating of 36A. Also required is an Intel Pentium/Core 2 or AMD Athlon/Phenom processor. The vendor recommends 512 MB of system memory as a minimum, but 2 GB will deliver the best performance.

The ATI Radeon card requires a 500-watt or greater power supply as well, with two 75-watt six-pin PCI Express power connectors. To utilize ATI's CrossFireX technology, a system will need a 600-watt power supply with four six-pin connectors. ATI recommends a minimum of 1 GB of memory.

Both also come with extensive features to beef up graphics even further. For example, the Nvidia card also supports scalability with SLI (Scalable Link Interface). SLI was, of course, invented by Nvidia and lets users link up two or more video cards, significantly increasing the processing power for graphics.

GeForce GTX 275 is also GeForce 3-D Vision-ready and supports Nvidia's PureVision HD technology, PhysX, which is an acceleration technology that adds to a realistic and vibrant gaming experience, and supports Nvidia's CUDA. (CUDA is an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture.) This is a computation method that developers use for high-end graphics cards that results in faster processing power.

The ATI card comes with a feature called Unified Video Decoder 2, or UVD 2. This feature helps to free up the CPU and allocates resources for other tasks such as processing-intensive content. The ATI card also supports extended Blu-ray functionality such as Picture-in-Picture and dual-stream capabilities.

Both cards support the OpenGL 3.0 standard. This is a standard specification used in developing applications that produce 2-D and 3-D graphics.

Taking a look at the engine specifications for each card demonstrates how high end in performance both of these graphics cards are. The ATI card has 959 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process. The engine clock is 850MHz. The memory clock is listed as 975MHz and the memory bandwidth is 124.8 GBps.

Nvidia's engine specs include 240 processor cores, a 633MHz graphics clock and a 1,404MHz processor clock. The memory clock is 1,134MHz and the memory bandwidth is 127 GBps.

Both of these cards come with specs that are built for overclocking. Neither card will break a system builder's budget either. The list price for the ATI Radeon is anywhere from $195 to $199. The GeForce GTX lists for about $250.

It's really hard deeming a winner in this bake-off. Both cards are very comparable when it comes to engine specifications, support for DirectX 10, processing power and scalability in linking other GPUs.

Both have an extensive feature set native to each vendor. ATI's CrossFireX technology, Dynamic Power Management and TeraScale Graphics Engine make it a card that is so well worth the price. Nvidia has a wide feature set as well with SLI capability, PhysX and CUDA.

It almost is painful to write, but the slight, hair's breadth of an edge goes to Nvidia. It consistently bested the ATI card in our benchmarks (though not by a real significant amount). We also liked the fact that the PCI Express ports are placed on the side of the card rather than the rear. The management utility that comes with the Nvidia card also seemed to have more configuration options. However, for $50 less, a system builder or gamer will not sacrifice anything by choosing the ATI Radeon.