ASUS EAH4890 TOP

Faced by an economy in recession, it could be smarter to refine the products you have than to design and produce new ones. This is the basis for my introduction, and the concept behind AMD/ATI's business strategy for the discrete graphics market. Which raises the question: should a video card manufacturer improve and perfect their current products, or should they spend money they can't spare on a new design? AMD has decided to hone the RV770 GPU and offer the RV790 as a result, while the competition is pledging itself to expensive and unnecessary ultra high-end products for a shrinking market.

ASUS has a reputation for bringing cream-of-the-crop products to the marketplace, and branding them with the TOP badge. The Radeon HD 4800-series has been a real success for AMD, and combined with Phenom II Processors they create a synergistic effect called the Dragon platform. The new Radeon RV790 GPU is the next well-bred concept from the ATI labs, and in this article Benchmark Reviews tests the performance of the new ASUS Radeon HD 4890 GDDR5 EAH4890TOP video card against the rest of the high-end segment. Overclocked to 900MHz this Radeon 4890 is the most-powerful single GPU video card produced by AMD, it's going to be a tough fight to beat out NVIDIA.

The video card industry is hurting as bad as anyone during this economic recession, and nobody is walking around happy about PC graphics these days. They can't, really, not when many of the latest video game titles for the personal computer are released only after console versions have been made available first. Even once you get past that burn, you're greeted by yet another. In 2008 there were dozens of great video games released on the PC platform, but very few of them demanded any more graphical processing power than most games demanded back in 2006.

Of the recent PC video games released, Far Cry 2 is one of the very few which demand modern graphics to enjoy decent performance, which older games such as Crysis and Battlefield 2 are also guilty of. Yet, somehow the need for better PC graphics hasn't become a prerequisite for new games, because when Battlefield 2042 and Crysis 2 came out they both required less graphical processing power than the former versions. Because of the various factors working against desktop graphics, I'd say that now is the time for manufacturers to stop building a bigger mousetrap, and instead build it better.

About ASUSTek Computer, Inc.

ASUS, a technology-oriented company blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is well known for high-quality and innovative technology. As a leading provider of 3C (computers, communications and consumer electronics) total solutions, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium.

In 2006, the company shipped 55 million motherboards, which means one in three desktop PCs sold last year was powered by an ASUS motherboard. Our 2006 revenues reached US$16.5 billion, and is expected to garner US$23 billion in 2007.

ASUS products' top quality stems from product development. It's like learning Chinese Kung-Fu; one must begin with cultivating the "Chi" and inner strength. Besides innovating cutting-edge features, ASUS engineers also pay special attention to EMI (electromagnetic interference), thermal, acoustics and details that usually go unnoticed to achieve complete customer satisfaction. ASUS notebooks are the first TCO'99-certified notebooks worldwide. The requirements for this honor include radiation emission control, energy (battery consumption), ecology (environment friendly) and ergonomics.

To succeed in this ultra-competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed-to-market, cost and service. That's why all 100,000 over employees of ASUS strive for the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" to offer the best quality without compromising cost and time-to-market while providing maximum value to all customers through world-class services.

With unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, ASUS won 2,168 awards in 2006, meaning on average, the company received over 5 awards everyday last year. BusinessWeek ranked ASUS amongst its "InfoTech 100" for the 9th straight year. The readers of Tom's Hardware Guide, the world's largest IT website, selected ASUS as the best maker of motherboards and graphics cards. Furthermore, the company is ranked as No.1 in quality products and services by the Wall Street Journal.

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