Introduction

As the name suggests, MSI's new HD 4890 Cyclone SOC is based on AMD's HD 4890 GPU Series featuring the RV790 GPU. Even though a 40 nm GPU has been announced in form of RV740, AMD has chosen to product RV790 in the proven 55 nm process which offers considerably better yields and uses readily available production facilities.

MSI has taken AMD's base design and heavily modified it for their purposes. The MSI R4890 Cyclone Series actually consists of three cards:

• R4890 Cyclone: 850 MHz Core, 975 MHz Memory
• R4890 Cyclone OC: 880 MHz Core, 975 MHz Memory
• R4890 Cyclone SOC 1000 MHz Core, 1000 MHz Memory

This review covers the R4890 Cyclone SOC which is MSI's highest end product in this series.
All cards are using a big 100 mm heatpipe cooler and feature native HDMI.

	GeForce 9800 GT	Radeon HD 4850	GeForce 9800 GTX	GeForce GTS 250 1 GB	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 4870	Radeon HD 4890	MSI R4890 Cyclone SOC	GeForce GTX 275	GeForce GTX 280	Radeon HD 4870 X2	GeForce GTX 285
Shader units	112	800	128	128	192	800	800	800	240	240	2x 800	240
ROPs	16	16	16	16	28	16	16	16	32	32	2x 16	32
GPU	G92	RV770	G92	G92	GT200	RV770	RV790	RV790	GT200	GT200	2x RV770	GT200b
Transistors	754M	956M	754M	754M	1400M	956M	959M	959M	1400M	1400M	2x 956M	1400M
Memory Size	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	896 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	896 MB	1024 MB	2x 1024 MB	1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	448 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	448 bit	512 bit	2x 256 bit	512 bit
Core Clock	600 MHz	625 MHz	675 MHz	738 MHz	576 MHz	750 MHz	850 MHz	1000 MHz	633 MHz	602 MHz	750 MHz	648 MHz
Memory Clock	900 MHz	993 MHz	1100 MHz	1100 MHz	999 MHz	900 MHz	975 MHz	1000 MHz	1134 MHz	1107 MHz	900 MHz	1242 MHz
Price	$110	$140	$160	$149	$240	$190	$200	$249	$249	$315	$425	$350