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MSI R4890 Super Overclocked (SOC) Review September 11, 2009 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: Clocked at 1000MHz/1000MHz, MSI's R4890 SOC delivers performance besting the GeForce GTX 285 while costing nearly $100 less. If that weren't enough, it also features impressive cooling and a shorter PCB. If you're in the market for a new Radeon 4890 card, you'll definitely want to check out our review of the board right here!
 MSI R4890 Super Overclocked (SOC) Review | Page:: ( 1 / 7 ) |
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Introduction
Some of the most powerful winds in nature are produced by cyclones. The strongest cyclones – category 5 – can generate wind gusts of more than 170 miles/hour.
With this in mind, MSI marketing fittingly chose the phrase “cyclone storm” to describe the action of the cooler on their latest Radeon 4890 card. Its 100mm fan is larger than the system fan in many PC cases, generating more airflow than ATI’s reference cooling design while running quieter.
But that’s not the only feature that stands out on this board. MSI’s incorporated their massive SuperPipes that we praised a few months ago in our N285GTX SuperPipe OC review, and they’ve come up with a completely new board design for their 4890 Cyclone that’s relies on a smaller PCB. Finally, the card can be had with OC’ed clock speeds. Our board, the SOC (Super Overclocked), runs at an even 1GHz core/1GHz memory.
Can MSI’s Cyclone Storm keep the 4890 cool at such high speeds though? Let’s find out…
Unique board design
While all gamers appreciate the performance NVIDIA and ATI provide with their latest high-end offerings, one downside of these cards is their size; the Radeon 4890’s PCB is 9.5 long”, while the GeForce GTX 275’s PCB measures even longer: 10.5”.
Normally this isn’t a problem if you have a large gaming-oriented ATX case, but for gamers looking to upgrade their basic Dell, HP, and Acer PCs, or someone with a smaller midsize ATX tower, these large cards can present a problem. Some of these users barely have enough clearance to squeeze the card behind their hard drive cage.
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MSI addresses this issue with their Radeon 4890 Cyclone. The card’s PCB measures just 9” long, making it a little shorter than the Radeon 4850 and GeForce 8800 GT. It’s a pretty impressive feat considering the size of their Cyclone cooler and all the 4890’s required power circuitry.
Speaking of the power circuitry, MSI is pretty proud of their use of solid-state chokes. Their 4890 board is loaded with them. It’s a nice touch that isn’t found on the 4890 reference design. MSI also uses highly conductive capacitors on the 4890 Cyclone. These are the same capacitors you’ll find dotted around the CPU socket on MSI’s high-end motherboards. These capacitors boast even better tolerance to overclocking/overvoltage than solid capacitors. You’ll find them nestled right next to the RV790 GPU.
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Finally, the board also features all-solid capacitors rated for 10 years of use. The 4890 reference design also uses solid capacitors though, so unlike the other board design features, there’s nothing unique about the 4890 Cyclone here.
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The most eye-catching aspect of the 4890 Cyclone is without a doubt its dual-slot cooler though. While we’ve pictured it here next to a 4890 for you, words really can’t begin to describe how massive the heatsink/heatpipe cooling is. It’s something you really have to see in person with your own eyes to properly appreciate how colossal everything is.
At the heart of the cooler are its two massive SuperPipes. Whereas most heatpipes are generall 5mm thick, MSI’s SuperPipes are 8mm. The heatpipes MSI uses are long too. They wrap around the majority of the GPU in a semicircle. They’re accompanied by smaller heatpipes for even greater cooling potential.
A 3-piece heatsink works to keep the heatpipes cool. Resting directly above the RV790 GPU is an Orb-shaped heatsink, which frankly looks a little overwhelmed resting directly above the two SuperPipes. It’s a slim, single-slot heatsink that’s composed of dozens of long, curved fins.
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Two dual-slot heatsinks are placed on the ends of the heatpipes. These heatsinks are decked out with the words “R4890” “Cyclone”.
At the center of the cooler is a 100mm fan. Again, this fan is larger than many case fans, and thanks to its size it’s able to run whisper quiet while still generating a ton of airflow. It’s actually quieter than the blower-style fan ATI uses on the 4890: crank the stock 4890 cooler to 75% fan speed and you’re generating quite a bit of noise (a lot of it coming from the fan’s motor); MSI’s fan just whooshes like the air conditioning in your home or car.
It’s really rather impressive considering the amount of air this fan can dish out.
| Board analysis (cont’d) | Page:: ( 2 / 7 ) |
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MSI outfits the 4890 Cyclone with the same Qimonda memory modules found on the ATI reference design.
Unlike the 4890 reference design, MSI doesn’t provide any cooling for the board’s memory modules though. Fortunately the Qimonda modules are designed to run without heatsinks, so technically they aren’t a requirement. However, considering this is a high-end board designed for enthusiasts, it would’ve been a good idea if MSI could’ve included them.
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MSI outfits the board with a variety of display options also. Besides providing one dual-link DVI with the 4890 Cyclone, the board also ships with an HDMI output and VGA connector. Here you’ll also see exhaust vents just above the display connectors, but obviously due to the nature of the cooler these vents aren’t going to be exhausting a lot of air: most of the air from the fan is going to be fed into your case.
Factory OC’ed
As we mentioned earlier, our R4890 Cyclone board is the Super Overclocked (SOC) model, which runs the graphics core at 1GHz. That’s 150MHz higher than stock. The board’s memory modules are then OC’ed to 1GHz, which is 25MHz higher than the stock 4890.
If you want to save a little money though MSI also offers the Overclocked (OC) model. This board ships with tamer speeds of 880MH core/975MHz memory. A third SKU is also offered that relies on the stock Radeon 4890 speeds of 850MHz/975MHz.
CrossFire operation
CrossFire may be something to watch with this card. We paired it alongside a bone stock 4890 reference design with the Cyclone card located in the uppermost PCIe slot and the reference board sitting underneath it.
As any enthusiast with a multi-GPU setup can tell you, in any CrossFire or SLI setup, it’s the uppermost (primary) card that gets the hottest under load. Now given the extraordinary nature of the cooler MSI has employed on the 4890 Cyclone, we naturally assumed it would be up the task. It was, running at 1000MHz core/1000MHz memory with no problems for 10-20 minute gaming sessions. Longer use though presented problems with system stability.
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With the 4890 reference board sporting a longer PCB and resting in such close proximity to the 4890 Cyclone SOC, it suffocates the Cyclone card’s 100mm fan of much of the air that it needs to run efficiently. Instead of cranking up the fan’s RPMs to compensate, the card soldiers on like a champ. Problem is, the fan needs to give in and run faster.
Without optimal airflow, the card’s massive heatpipes eventually get scorching hot. This heat has nowhere to go, heating up the GPU, board, and all of its components. Eventually the card succumbs to the heat and locks up the PC. We’re talking a hard lock too, requiring a full reboot (after the card has cooled down of course).
This happened to us repeatedly, and the only way to remedy the situation was to either place the 4890 Cyclone in the secondary (bottom) graphics slot, where airflow isn’t an issue (unless of course you also have an expansion card next to this slot), or to manually crank up the fan’s RPMs in ATI Overdrive.
Bundle and accessories
With such a wide variety of display outputs, MSI skips shipping the card with any display adapters. There are no DVI-to-VGA or DVI-to-HDMI adapters here, as outputs for both of these are natively provided on the backplate of the card.
This means the R4890 Cyclone won’t natively drive dual DVI displays, you’ll need to hunt for an HDMI-to-DVI adapter if you want to do that.
Fortunately, the card does ship with two 6-pin PCIe power adapters and CrossFire cable though.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 3 / 7 ) |
Intel Core i7-920
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme
6GB OCZ Reaper HPC DDR3-1600
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 216 core
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1GB
ForceWare 190.38
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
MSI R4890 Cyclone Super Overclocked
Catalyst 9.8
300GB Western Digital Caviar SE
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/Service Pack 2
Benchmarks
Fallout 3
Crysis
STALKER: Clear Sky
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5 Performance Benchmark
Fallout 3
| Performance | Page:: ( 4 / 7 ) |
| Temps/Overclocking | Page:: ( 5 / 7 ) |
Overclocking
Temps
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 6 / 7 ) |
Blazing clock speeds: Our Super Overclocked board runs at 1GHz/1GHz, technically making it the fastest card we’ve seen in terms of clock speeds. It’s because of these speeds that the MSI board was able to run up to 10% faster than the stock Radeon 4890 in Crysis and Far Cry 2. STALKER Clear Sky is also a graphically demanding title. Here the MSI 4890 Cyclone SOC ran 12% faster than the stock 4890.
As a result, the MSI board actually outran GeForce GTX 285 in our benchmarks.
Cooling: MSI’s R4890 Cyclone employs massive 8mm thick heatpipes to help draw heat off the card’s RV790 GPU. These heatpipes then are paired with more conventional heatpipes and a dual-slot heatsink to bolster the cooler’s performance.
A 100mm fan is used to supply the heatsink/heatpipe combination with cool air. By using such a large fan, MSI is able to generate lots of airflow without having to crank up the fan’s RPMs, which would result in a noisier cooler.
MSI’s cooler is quite effective too. Despite being OC’ed significantly higher than the stock Radeon 4890 card we tested, it ran seven degrees Celsius cooler at load.
Pricing: Officially MSI’s R4890 Cyclone SOC carries an MSRP of $239.99. While that’s a little higher than other Radeon 4890 cards on the market, also consider that you’re getting a board with excellent cooling, and some of the fastest clock speeds you can get in a Radeon 4890 card.
If you don’t want to spend that kind of money though MSI does offer the R4890 Cyclone OC. This board sells for $199.99 on Newegg right now and has the same Cyclone cooling, only it isn’t OC’ed to the same extremes as our SOC board, running at just 880MHz core/975MHz memory.
Diverse array of video outputs: MSI equips the R4890 Cyclone with a pretty wide variety of display outputs for gamers. In addition to sporting a dual-link DVI output, the card also features an HDMI output and VGA. But…
Shorter PCB: Those of you with smaller cases will be glad to hear that the R4890 Cyclone utilizes a shorter 9” PCB. That’s half an inch shorter than the stock 4890, and it’s the only 4890 card we’ve seen this short.
Cons
Lack of support for dual DVIs in favor of 1xVGA: We could do without the sole VGA output. Analog VGA displays are being phased out in favor of digital outputs like DVI and DisplayPort. Considering this is a card oriented towards enthusiasts (who are more likely to own digital displays) we feel that offering an analog VGA out instead of DVI or DisplayPort is a mistake on MSI’s part.
More aggressive fan profile needed for CrossFire: The default fan profile seems to emphasize low fan speeds a little too much in comparison to low temps. Fortunately this isn’t an issue if you’re just running one card, but if you step it up to two cards you may find yourself manually adjusting the fan’s RPMs in Overdrive.
DirectX 11: It’s no secret that the first DX11 GPUs will hit retail in a matter of weeks. And ATI’s confirmed that their next-generation GPU will deliver significantly more performance than today’s 4890, with RV870 topping out at 2.5 TeraFLOPS. What isn’t known is how much these cards will cost. Current rumors have pricing starting around $299.99.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 7 / 7 ) |
FiringSquad says:
That’s a savings of nearly $100.
The R4890 Cyclone SOC gets this performance from its blazing 1000MHz core/1000MHz memory clocks. This is an improvement of 15% on the graphics core alone, and allows the MSI card to run up to 10% faster than the stock 4890 card in popular benchmarks like Far Cry 2 and Crysis.
But better performance isn’t this card’s only strength. It also boasts significantly improved cooling. MSI employs two SuperPipe heatpipes in addition to two regular heatpipes on the R4890 Cyclone. These SuperPipes are massive, measuring 8mm in thickness. Thanks to their larger size, they’re able to draw more heat off the GPU. A dual-slot heatsink and 100mm fan are then responsible for keeping the heatpipes cool.
The fan runs quietly and thanks to its large size, it’s able to supply lots of fresh air to the card. You may need to crank up the fan speeds slightly if you plan on running it in CrossFire though.
The card also ships with a wide variety of display outputs, but we feel the lack of support for dual DVIs could turn off a lot of enthusiasts with two DVI-based LCD monitors. We’d gladly see the VGA output go in favor of a second DVI. MSI then could’ve shipped the card with a DVI-to-VGA adapter.
That’s the card’s only real weakness in our opinion.
We can’t wait to see what MSI’s got in store for their next-generation DX11 cards though. They’re now integrating the very best components they can find on their graphics boards, including high-c capacitors and solid state chokes. These are the same components you’ll find on their very best motherboards. MSI’s SuperPipe heatpipes are another nice touch that all enthusiasts can appreciate.
The best part though is that MSI keeps their pricing aggressive. You can find their baseline R4890 Cyclone OC for $200 on Newegg right now. That’s only $5 more than the cheapest bone stock cards based on ATI’s reference design. This unique combination of price, performance, and features is what earns them our Bull’s Eye award (for their entire R4890 Cyclone line) and is why enthusiasts will likely keep coming back to MSI when it’s time to upgrade to their next graphics card.