VisionTek HD 4890 OC Review - PAGE 14

Temperature

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.

ZEROTherm proves to be a great partner to work with for VisionTek, as their cooler is able to keep things a full 9° cooler than the PowerColor HD 4890 in the line-up, which sports a default design cooler. Considering the ZEROTherm doesn't make much noise either, and it is definitely a winner. 

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.

Whoa! If the VisionTek HD 4890 OC proves to be a good seller, North America might have to build another couple of dams and nuclear reactors.

A whopping 444 Watts at load is a score we haven't seen in a while now. The VisionTek HD 4890 OC has the extra capacity for overclocking, but keeping that GPU well supplied with juice comes at a cost of big-time power use.

You'll want at least a well-made, non-bargain-price 500W power supply to power this beast. But something over 600W would be preferred.

Conclusion

There have been rumors and rumblings recently, throughout the tech press, that VisionTek has been suffering some financial hardships, and was in danger of going of business. These has been proven untrue -- the company has secured new funding, and is investing in a new building. And furthermore, when they make solid products such as today's HD 4890 OC, you can imagine that they will continue to be  in sound financial shape. 

The VisionTek HD 4890 OC is a nice piece of work. Two particular things that it has going for it are that the OC actually stands for something, and is a big overclock; and the ZEROtherm cooler. While we have seen some good home-grown custom coolers appear on VisionTek's products before, from the ones we have reviewed in the past (such as this one on a HD 3870 X2), have never thoroughly impressed us. Today's ZEROtherm cooler is quiet and cool (temperature wise) -- and hey, that's all we ask. Its good.

Other pro's for this card include high-end overclocking potential, VisionTek's Limited Lifetime warranty, and a price that is on the good side of average (currently this video card is a bit hard too find; we only located it for sale in the U.S at Best Buy, for $229.)

Marks off for the VisionTek HD 4890 OC could be taken for the excessive power requirements, and perhaps the fairly plain bundle.

It's cut-throat in the world of video cards at the moment. Whether to go with one model or another almost changes on a week-by-week basis now, as prices plummet. All-in-all though, if you are looking for a HD 4890, VisionTek's OC model is a good choice.