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Review: ASUS vs. ASUS: GeForce GTX 260 MATRIX against Radeon HD 4890 Voltage Tweak

by Tarinder Sandhu on 7 May 2009, 05:00 3.35

Tags: Radeon HD 4890 Voltage Tweak, ASUS ENGTX260 MATRIX 896MB , ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), PC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qar4g

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System setup and notes

        
Graphics cards Inno3D GTX 275 OC 896MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275  896MB ASUS GeForce GTX 260 MATRIX 896MB BFG GeForce GTX 260 
896MB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 OC 1,024MB ASUS Radeon HD 4890 Voltage Tweak 1,024MB Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1,024MB
Current pricing, including VAT £220 £199
£185 (TBC) £155 £198 £201
£160
Shader model 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.1 4.1 4.1
Stream processors 240 240 216 216 800 800 800
GPU clock speed (MHz) 670 633 601 576 900 850 750
Shader clock speed (MHz) 1,474 1,404 1,296 1,242 900 850 750
Memory clock speed (MHz) 2,350 2,268 1,998 1,998 4,000 3,900 3,600
Memory bus width (bits) 448 448 448 448 256 256 256
CPU Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition (3.20GHz, 8MB L3 cache, quad-core, LGA1,366)
Motherboard Foxconn Bloodrage X58
Motherboard BIOS P04
Mainboard software Intel Inf 9.1.0.1012
Memory 6GB Corsair DOMINATOR PC12,800
Memory timings and speed 9-9-9-24 1T @ DDR3-1,333
PSU Cooler Master Real Power Pro 1,000W
Monitor Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600px
Disk drive(s) Seagate 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (3Gb/s mode)
Graphics driver ForceWare 185.63 beta ForceWare 185.63 beta ForceWare 185.66  ForceWare 182.06  Catalyst 9.4  Catalyst 9.4  Catalyst 9.3
Operating system Windows Vista Business SP1, 64-bit

Software

3D Benchmarks Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare v1.7, HEXUS custom-recorded benchmark: DX9 - very high quality
Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.301: DX10 - very high quality
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.5, HEXUS custom-recorded benchmark. OpenGL - very high quality
Far Cry 2 v1.02 DX10 - very high quality
Race Driver: GRID v1.2, HEXUS custom-recorded benchmark - ultra quality

Notes

We've run the ASUS GeForce GTX 260 MATRIX with the optimised profile in place, representing a slight overclock, as that's what ASUS guarantees. At the time of writing, the card wasn't available in the UK from the usual reputable etailers, so we've taken a best-guess and apportioned a £185 price-tag for it.

It's up against a couple of faster NVIDIA cards, powered by the GeForce GTX 275, whilst the ASUS Radeon HD 4890 VT 1,024MB dukes it out against a pre-overclocked HD 4890 and standard-clocked HD 4870.

Let's get the benchmark machine rollin'.