MSI Radeon HD 4890 1GB OC Graphic Card Review

Before the Radeon HD 4890 ever hit the street there were rumors about how well the card would overclock.  Well it would seem that many sites were luckly and got some great cards that overclocked quite well.  As we mentioned before the MSI Radeon HD 4890 1GB OC is a factory overclocked product with a minor 30Mhz core/50MHz memory frequency boost.  We needed to push this card even further if we wanted to reach the rumored internet numbers so we went to work.

Testing to find the perfect balance of core speed versus memory speed on the Radeon 4890 was tricky and the best our card would do is a whopping 930MHz core and 1100MHz memory speed.  This is a far cry from what the internet said was true and reaffirms the adage "Your Mileage My Vary".  The speed obtained is nothing to get upset about as the speed bump does increase overall performance.

Here we have a noticeable gain in overall performance especially in the lower resolutions. The 2560 x 1600 resolution barrier is not easily broken by any video card and overclocking alone will not always get you there.

In FEAR 2 the results of the increased speed is not as noticeable. Yet every extra frame will make the in-game experience that much more enjoyable. In the 2560 x 1600 resolution the extra speed does show a good healthy boost in performance which is more than welcome.