Given that AMD's Radeon HD 4890 appears to be in stock with various etailers, has already been benchmarked and is currently being sold in areas such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, it'll come as little surprise to hear reports from SE Asia that the official launch date of the product has been moved forward to April 2nd.
At present, Radeon HD 4890 cards in Hong Kong are said to be selling for around HK$2,280, further confirming that the speculated UK pricing of £230 isn't far off the mark.
With AMD seemingly ready to pounce with its fastest-ever single-GPU part, all eyes are on NVIDIA and its GeForce GTX 275 as it'll no doubt want to reach the market around the same time as its rival. Should that be the case, the next AMD vs NVIDIA showdown will be taking place a little over a week from now.
In case you've missed our recent coverage, here's how the AMD Radeon HD 4890 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 slot in to the existing mid-to-high-end line up:
| Graphics cards | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1,024MB |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1,024MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 896MB* | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 896MB | AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 2,048MB | AMD Radeon HD 4850 X2 2,048MB | AMD Radeon HD 4890 1,024MB* | AMD Radeon HD 4870 512MB | AMD Radeon HD 4850 512MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCIe | PCIe 2.0 | |||||||||
| GPU(s) clock | 576MHz | 648MHz | 602MHz | 633MHz | 576MHz | 750MHz | 625MHz | 850MHz | 750MHz | 625MHz |
| Shader clock | 1,242MHz | 1,476MHz | 1,296MHz | 1,404MHz | 1,242MHz | 750MHz | 625MHz | 850MHz | 750MHz | 625MHz |
| Memory clock (effective) | 1,998MHz | 2,484MHz | 2,214MHz | 2,322MHz | 1,998MHz | 3,600MHz | 1,986MHz | 3,900MHz | 3,600MHz | 1,986MHz |
| Memory interface and size | 448-bit (per GPU), 1,792MB, GDDR3 | 512-bit, 1,024MB, GDDR3 | 512-bit, 1,024MB, GDDR3 | 448-bit, 896MB, GDDR3 | 448-bit, 896MB, GDDR3 | 512-bit (2x 256-bit), 2,048MB, GDDR5 | 512-bit (2x 256-bit), 2,048MB, GDDR3 | 256-bit, 1,024MB, GDDR5 | 256-bit, 512MB, GDDR5 | 256-bit, 512MB, GDDR3 |
| DirectX/ Shader Model | DX10, 4.0 | DX10, 4.0 | DX10, 4.0 | DX10, 4.0 | DX10, 4.0 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 |
| Vertex, fragment, geometry shading (shared) | 480 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 240 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 240 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 240 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 216 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 1,600 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) | 1,600 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) | 800 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) | 800 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) | 800 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) |
| Multi-GPU | SLI - quad | SLI - three-board | SLI - three-board | SLI - three-board | SLI - three-board | CrossFire - two-board | CrossFire - two-board | CrossFire - four-board | CrossFire - four-board | CrossFire - four-board |
| Hardware-assisted video-decoding engine | NVIDIA's PureVideo HD - full H.264 decode and partial VC-1 decode, plus dual-stream decode | AMD UVD 2 - full H.264 and VC-1 decode, plus dual-stream decode | ||||||||
| Reference cooler | dual-slot | dual-slot | dual-slot | dual-slot | dual-slot | dual-slot | dual-slot | dual-slot | dual-slot | single-slot |
| *unannounced product and specification | ||||||||||
