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MSI Radeon HD 4890 1GB OC Graphic Card Review
Author: William West
Published: Thursday, May 07, 2009
Card Layout & Features
Here is the MSI Radeon HD 4890 1GB OC in its beautiful sexy red glory. There is nothing out of the ordinary here as MSI is following the reference design all the way. Aside from a cool looking alien monster out of 5th Element on the heatsink this card looks exactly like a 4870.
The back of the MSI Radeon HD 4890 is pretty boring, but the red PCB is still an awesome site as we love to see companies exploiting red and black PCBs.
The MSI Radeon HD 4890 1GB OC comes with 2 x Dual Link DVI connectors, plus adaptors for HDMI and Analog connections. You will also find an onboard HD audio chip so there will be no problem getting HD audio over HDMI.
Power consumption is less when compared to the older Radeon 4870 but the 190 watt power draw still requires 2x 6-pin power connectors to function properly.
Not much has changed since the Radeon 2900 days in terms of GPU cooling. The heatsink is still a dual slot copper heatpipe design with a large fan that vents outside the chassis. Functionally speaking NVIDIA and ATI are using a similar design to maximize cooling in the space provided.
The metal X bracket and surrounding spring screws hold the heatsink in place and also make swapping the OEM cooler for an aftermarket unit extremely easy. Simply remove the screws and carefully lift the heatsink unit away. Keep in mind this will likely also void your warranty.
When attempting to setup Crossfire or Crossfire X you will need to use these bridge posts so the cards can talk to each other. The Radeon series is unique in that it can have up to four GPUs chained together and even setup hybrid configurations such as linking a single Radeon HD 4890 to a Radeon HD 4870X2.
