Gamers and PC enthusiasts alike are no strangers to GPU overclocking. And now AMD is trying to boost the profile of its flagship Radeon 4890 graphics card by offering a factory-overclocked option that sees it reach the notable gigahertz barrier, a 18% jump over the default 850MHz. The relatively new card has already been tested extensively and has been found to be a competent option, though it hasn't gone unrivaled since Nvidia has an equally attractive product in the GeForce GTX 275.
It's a novel but increasingly common approach for manufacturers to be playing up their hardware's overclocking capabilities, which AMD has been doing more frequently as of late. In this case, the factory overclocked HD 4890 comes with standard warranty coverage.
If AMD feels confident enough to boast about the HD 4890 exceeding 1GHz with nothing but air-cooling, perhaps they should back it up by also covering those who want to overclock it themselves and avoid paying a premium. Multiple AMD vendors, including Sapphire and XFX, are expected to release these "Black Edition" 4890s for a yet to be determined price.