Son of a B!#CH!!! If only I had waited just two stinking weeks eh...
Actually, the problem was 'fixed' when I reinstalled Vista on my new i7 setup.Something in that previous installation kept 'breaking' Catalyst, so I guess AMD is nottotally to blame.
ATI's 4890 "mysteriously" tips up in forum benchmarkingCat leaves bagBy Sylvie BarakThursday, 26 March 2009, 13:22WE RECENTLY DISCOVERED an interesting thread over at the Novatech forums concerning a "mysterious card" with some impressive benchmarks and exciting overclocking capabilities.Gibbo, a Novatech forum admin, posted that he had been playing around with the card, and for good measure, and your esteemed viewing pleasure, decided to post a few benchmark results from it.Gibbo notes his system specs are nothing special, with his Intel Kentsfield Quad Core at 3.20GHz, Abit IP35 Pro Mainboard, 3GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory, 4x Samsung SSD 32GB SLC, and Windows 7 64-Bit BETA (with Catalyst 9.3 Drivers) and Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit (with supplied Drivers). No Core I7 processor, no DDR3 memory or crazy overclock, so, he warns, if you think the benchmarks don't look that great, bear the system specs in mind.The first benchmark, from a 4870 512MB and "mysterious card" (at 750MHz / 3600MHz -Windows 7 - Catalyst 9.3), give the following 3DMark06 results: For 3DMark Vantage, Gibbo got the following:When the mystery card was run at stock speeds (Windows Vista 64-Bit - Supplied Drivers), the following results from 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage were attained:Noting "my god does it overclock well", Gibbo then proceeded to post benchmarks from the mystery card at overclocked speeds:And then again at overclocked speeds with a few tweaks and a bit of CPU overclocking to boot (CPU overclocked to 3.5GHz via increasing FSB to 438MHz):Gibbo states the obvious when he notes the card seems to greatly benefit from being overclocked, stating "infact when overclocked this card is approx 30 per cent faster that a 4870 512mb graphics card, which is quite an accomplishment." Indeed.The card's cooling performance is apparently also pretty impressive and noise levels are purportedly "very good".Novatech holds "plenty of stock of this new mysterious card ready for launch".We're really not sure what this "mystery" lark is all about! It seems fairly clear to us that with ATI bringing forward the release date of its 4890 from April 9th to April 2nd, there must be plenty of stocks available. It's also already on sale in Taiwan and Hong Kong for around HK$2,280. UK retail price is expected to be around £230.It's hardly going to be the GTX275 (Nvidia's cut-in-half and rebranded 295) which was aimed for release on April 6th but has now been pushed back until at least April 14th, we hear. µClick here to find out more!