Last week, we covered the launch of the Radeon HD 4890 in-depth but due to the quick turnaround time that is often associated with releases, we didn't have an opportunity to really push the overclocking aspect of the board. Today, we aim to remedy this oversight, as we have in our grubby little hands, the latest Radeon HD 4890 from XFX. It's not just any Radeon HD 4890 either, this is the top-end XXX edition which comes in with clocks at 900MHz on the core and 3900MHz for the memory, making it one of the fastest available on the market today. So what does the extra clock speed tell us? Is it just another Radeon HD 4890 who has had the last drop squeezed out? Or is there something special? - ClubOC

XFX Radeon HD 4980 Triple-X Graphics Board Review

This XFX Radeon HD 4890 XXX version makes use of AMD's brand new RV790 core, which promises to deliver the features of the Radeon HD 4870, but with a much higher clock potential. The XXX edition aims to make the absolute most of that potential, boasting one of the highest clock speeds out of the box of any card on the market. On top of that, the XXX edition is equipped with 1GB of high bandwidth GDDR5 memory, with enough bandwidth to just kill a yak at a hundred yards. When it comes to overclocking the Radeon HD 4890 it is a rather simple task, to a certain point which is actually limited by the makers.

The Overdrive function of the latest Catalyst drivers allows for overclocking up to 1000MHz on the core and 4800MHz on the memory, which is alright if you are a normal type of person that respects your hardware's right to not melt into a pool of singed copper and smoking PCB. We just don't respect our hardware that way and well, this XFX XXX edition pushed out to 1GHz without breaking a sweat. Since the Overdrive feature would not take us as far as we wanted to, we had to turn to third party tools to acheive our goals. Amazingly, the XXX edition was able to push to an astonishing 1020MHz on the core, and 4960MHz on the memory.

After the launch of the Radeon HD 4890, there has been a lot of talk about the comparative value between it and the Radeon HD 4870. Exactly like we predicted in last week's article, many users out there are having a hard time justifying the thirty percent price premium for a ten percent performance increase. And the overclocked editions like these XXX only muddle the picture further, now bringing equally more performance over any overclocked Radeon HD 4870 at an even higher price premium. We suppose this is the price of being on top, but we can't help but wonder if there will be some price reductions in the near future.

We are sure a lot of this depends on the availability and overclocking capability of the green team's GeForce GTX 275, which just hit the market at a similar price point. So needless to say, the $200-300 price range has just become a whole lot more interesting. On the plus side, the XFX versions of the Radeon HD 4890 are getting bundled with the latest Tom Clancy's game, so that may serve to sway the opinion of value for those interested in this DirectX 10.1 flight combat. With that being said, there is no denying that the XFX Radeon HD 4890 XXX edition is an overclocking beast with quite some great future ahead.

We have not had this much fun overclocking a video card in a long time. It has just exceeded all our expectations in this regard, and if the overclocks we have achieved are typical, then XFX has definitely a winner on its hands. We will be keeping a close eye on those major overclocking sites out there to see if the overclocked cards are typically getting better overclocks than the vanilla cards, or if it is all just a placebo effect.