Board Analysis

Fundamentally MSI’s R4850 512M is based on ATI’s reference design of the Radeon 4850. No changes are made to the board design itself. Capacitors, resistors, and all the other circuitry on the board is the exact same as the Radeon HD 4850 reference design. MSI even opts to run the board at the stock Radeon 4850 clock speeds.

Rather than make changes to the board design, MSI instead focuses their efforts on the 4850’s cooling. The stock single-slot heatsink/fan unit designed by ATI is replaced by a dual-slot cooler that MSI originally developed for their custom GeForce 9600 GT card, the MSI N9600 GT Hybrid Freezer 1GB.

By sticking with the ATI reference board design and adopting the same cooling as their existing 9600 GT board, MSI is able to bring their card to market faster. Already this card can be found today on Newegg selling for $192.99. So what makes the cooling so special? Its heatpipes.


For maximum cooling performance, MSI uses four copper heatpipes for cooling the RV770 GPU. Based on our measurements, each heatpipe is over 8” in length, and 6mm thick. MSI’s use of long, thicker heatpipes further improves the effectiveness of the cooler. According to MSI their use of thicker heatpipes improves cooling effectiveness by 20% in comparison to typical 5mm heatpipes.

With their copper design, the heatpipes are capable pulling quite a bit of heat off the GPU. This heat must then be dispersed in order to prevent the heatpipes themselves from becoming a hotspot on the graphics card. To accomplish this, MSI employs a dual-slot aluminum heatsink. Heat from the heatpipes is transferred to this heatsink, which is composed of nearly three dozen fins. Each fin is slightly over 7” long, and ½” thick. Heat from the heatpipes is dispersed along the entire length of these fins. Employing such a large heatsink increases its surface area, and thus increases the effectiveness of the cooler.

Supplying the heatpipes and heatsink with fresh cool air is an 80mm fan. By using such a large fan (most case fans measure 80mm), the cooler is able to supply a large amount of air without having to resort to spinning up to high RPMs. This helps to keep noise output down to a minimum. Even under extended 3D load, you can barely hear the fan on the R4850 512M in operation.

If you recall our GeForce 9600 GT roundup, the fan on the MSI 9600 GT Hybrid Freezer card only spun up when the GPU reached a certain temperature, but this isn’t the case for the R4850 512M; the fan spins at all times on this board. We consider this a good thing as the Hybrid Freezer card ran hotter than many of the other GeForce 9600 GT cards featured in our roundup as a result.

The rest of the R4850 512M is pretty standard fare as far as Radeon HD 4850 cards go. MSI includes an aluminum heatsink to cool the power circuitry on the right edge of the board, but this is a standard feature on all Radeon 4850 cards. MSI also cools the memory modules with an aluminum plate connected via thermal pad. We would have preferred the use of RAMsinks connected via thermal paste, but this is a small gripe, as most cards use similar cooling methods. As we mentioned earlier, the board runs at the stock Radeon 4850 speeds of 625MHz graphics core, and 1.0GHz memory.


To keep costs down the card doesn’t ship with a game bundle, but you do get a DVI adapter, HDMI adapter, and a component video cable. Officially the card retails for an MSRP of $199.99, which is the same price tag that the bone stock Radeon HD 4850 officially retails for. On Newegg the R4850 512M sells for $8 more than MSI’s stock card, so this is quite a good deal considering the superior cooling performance of MSI’s cooler, which you can see on the overclocking results page.