Diamond HD4890-XOC, Review – Part 2

3DMark06

3DMark06 still remains the number one utility used for a system benchmark. We find that it is mostly useful for tracking changes within a single system, which is what we are doing now. There are four “mini-games” that it uses for benchmarking graphics, as well as two CPU tests. The scores are weighed and added together to give an overall “score” and there is a further frame rate breakdown possible with these mini games that we are charting for you.

Here is a scene from one of the four benchmark “mini games” used to benchmark GPU performance. It will still give your PC a real workout even though its default resolution is only 1280×1024.

Here are the results of our 3DMark06 benchmark comparison using the benchmark at its default settings:

They are just scores.  We had to check to make sure the overclocked numbers were not substituted for the stock ones by mistake.  But this variability occurs just running the tests over and over.  Now the mini-game frame rates:

‘Playing’ the 3DMark06 Mini-games on the HD4890 would clearly edge out play with the HD4870 and the overclocked HD4890 scales nicely to match or beat the GTX280.  The overclocked HD4890 is slightly “faster” than the stock Diamond HD4890-XOC.  So, let’s move on to our second synthetic benchmark, Vantage.