When AMD announced the Radeon HD 4890 graphics card they were open to allow partners to overclock the RV790 graphics circuit above reference speeds. The card is well equipped for enthusiasts and overclocker, making the marketing quite easy, just show how high the cards can go. Lately we’ve been hearing about how AMD partners have been planning to clock the GPU of Radeon HD 4890 as high as 1GHz.
We have told you about 1GHz cars from both Sapphire and PowerColor, but it looks like also MSI is about to enter the game with its Radeon HD 4890 Cyclone. Its fastest version of Radeon HD 4890 will sport high quality capacitors and power circuitry, and MSI’s SuperPipe cooler to keep the temperature at bay.
MSI R4890 Cyclone also comes with 1GHz GPU frequency
We are currently working on an overclocking article with Radeon HD 4890 and both ours and other tests have shown that the key to high frequencies is the voltage you feed the GPU.
The reference version of Radeon HD 4890 has a GPU voltage at 1.3V but at least PowerColor’s and Sapphire’s new beasts have GPU voltages at whopping 1.5V, which is required to keep the circuit stable at 1GHz.
ASUS use dual Volterra voltage regulators with EAH4890 TOP
ASUS uses high density capacitors with its TOP version of HD 4890 that is having a tough time to break 1GHz without pushing the voltage up to 1.4V-1.5V from there reference of about 1.3V. Despite ASUS special cooler and improved power circuitry TechPowerUp! was unable to reach more than 1020MHz.
The new cards that will appear with 1GHz GPU clock frequencies will sport better potential to reach higher clock frequencies though. A source within the graphics card market has pointed out that MSI but possibly also PowerColor and Sapphire are buying handpicked RV790 GPUs to eliminate the chance of bad GPUs.
