MSI R4890 Cyclone OC Review - PAGE 14

Operating temperatures

To measure core GPU temperature, we used the hardware monitoring program in RivaTuner 2.24. The idle temperature was taken after leaving nothing running, on Vista's desktop, for a minute. The load temperature was taken after a 100,000ms run of Furmark at 1680x1050 with no AA.

While the Cyclone did not best the high-end competition in the benchmarks, it did however excel in when it came to keeping things cool. The massive cooler was hardly stressed at all when we were stressing this video card -- making us somewhat surprised we did not have better luck overclocking beyond it's default OC. 

Power Usage

To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we took the sustained peak power drain readings at the end of 200,000ms run of Furmark at the maximum resolution.

As the R4890 Cyclone put in good numbers for the operating temperatures, so as well did it do here, when it came to power usage. The peak power requirements were much lower than the other two HD 4890s in our lineup. 

You'll want a 500W or better to keep this card happy. Remember though, not all PSUs are created equal though -- if you have an old, generic 500W PSU you might be pushing things here. At least give it a good vacuuming before you plug this baby in.

Conclusion

The MSI R4890 Cyclone OC is a superior build of a HD 4890, but overall, it didn't have performance that was as awe-inspiring as its namesake. We felt that the OC was a bit too modest to really take advantage of the the nice cooler on this well-built video card. Perhaps all the 'wow' factor of the Cyclone is found in this card's elder brother, the Cyclone SOC, which runs at 1000 MHz for the core and memory -- a sizable step above this version. Unfortunately, we had no luck coming anyone near that level with our manual overclocking tests.

However we don't want that to make this sound too negative -- after all, the OC and the SOC version are priced accordingly. Currently at a top e-tailer, the Cyclone OC is selling for $185 USD (after rebate), making it a solid offering amongst the competition. There is no shortage of non-OC'ed HD 4890 video cards selling for about this price, which puts the Cyclone OC is good company.

Also, the components used in the R4890's construction are of high quality, and having that extra HDMI port on the video card may make this HD 4890 the card to choose, for some people. Unlike our Editor's Choice-winning MSI N260GTX OC V3 though, the performance of this OC'ed HD 4890  -- as with many other HD 4890s actually -- is reasonable and good, but just not enough to really strike a knock-out blow to the mass of competition out there right now, around this price-point.

In the end, for the price it is selling at, the R4890 Cyclone OC is a good offering from MSI. If your rig can fit the card, you're looking at well-made video card.