AMD has presented their new top-of-the-line model in the beginning of this month, with the name of HD4890, placing itself in a slightly superior position than the previous HD4870.

In order to counteract the boost in performance that nVidia has achieved with their 55nm fabrication process, and the launch of the GeForce GTX 295, which had no rivals in ATI models, ATI had to find a quick solution to keep up with the competition, and the HD4890 seemed like a good option.

Months bfore the initial launch, there was much speculation on how the new ATI proposal based on the RV790 could have been, and there were rumors of a higher number of stream processors or even a 512Bit memory controller. But it seemed unlikely that AMD would create a whole new CPU, first because of the costs involved, and the fact that the new GPU is already being projected.

AMD has thus decided to enhance the current GPU performance, with low costs and a very high performances, while waiting for the next generation of graphic cards.