AMD/ATI Beats Nvidia to the 1 GHz GPU Milestone

AMD boasted today that it has delivered the world’s first 1 GHz GPU. Is this a new product? Not exactly.

What AMD has done is that it has taken an ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, which normally runs at 850 MHz, and overclocked it to 1 GHz at the factory – air cooled – and voila, you have yourself the world’s first shipping 1 GHz GPU part.

In fact, if you had your own Radeon HD 4890, you might be able to reach 1 GHz too. Of course, AMD does have the advantage of binning parts to make sure that those with the most headroom get separated for this new SKU.

The flip side of that equation also means that any GPUs that aren’t able to hit the 1 GHz mark on just air cooling will be relegated to just the old “regular” pile, which will cap speeds at which the Radeon HD 4890 will run.

Look out for these juiced up video cards from Asus, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, Gecube, Gigabyte, HIS (Hightech Information Systems), ITC, Jetway, MSI, Palit Multimedia, PowerColor, Sapphire Technology and XFX.

Stay tuned for our hands on with one of these cards where we'll put it up against a 'vanilla' reference board.

Interestingly enough, this is the second time that AMD has beat an arch rival to the 1 GHz milestone. Back in 2000, AMD beat Intel to the 1 GHz punch with its Athlon. Remember that? Take a trip with us down memory lane as we look back on Chris Angelini’s review of the AMD Athlon 1 GHz during his more innocent and much younger days.