The place where the cooler touches the GPU (on the edges) is especially reinforced and precisely designed so the copper slot on the side could best fit the surface of the core. The cooling system itself is not that different, at least not when it comes to the concept, from the one on Radeon HD4870 cards, which is again a revised version of the cooler on HD3870 model. The cooper base touching hte core and the memory is a bit bigger and longer and it is also well polished. The cooler is made from a combination of metals: the base is made of copper while the main radiator with leaves is made of aluminum. In order to acquire a better distribution of heat, instead of two, three copper heat-pipes of different dimensions were added to the system. Experts for cooling have calculated that a better result would produce a combination of two heat-pipes with 6 millimetres radii and one heat-pipe with 8 millimetre radius than two heat-pipes with 8 millimetres radii (like with Radeon HD4870). The functioning principle hasn't changed: a ventilator (NTK Technologies, 12V, 1.0A) inserts the colder air in a tunnel which has heated leaves which have taken the heat from the base of the cooler. Heat is transferred to the air which quickly passes through the tunnel and goes out of the case, which makes a significant detail and an important significance compared to the single-slot coolers which can heat the interior of the system (the temperature of the motherboard, even the processor itself). Also, dual-slot coolers are often quieter than the narrower single-slot coolers. Even the power supply unit has an additional heat sink which is connected with the rest of the cooler. This power supply unit contains a succession of VRMS elements, some of which are cooled passively. Among the power supply regulators, we see Vitec Multi-phase inductor chips with two-pulse VRMS elements. 

XFX Radeon HD4890 has two dual-link DVI ports and one S-Video exit. HDMI connection is made via a special adapter through which the 1.7 audio goes, too. Furthermore, the card has two Crossfire connectors for Crossfire systems and two six-pin PCI Express connectors for external power.As we have already mentioned, HD4890 the advanced version of RV770 processor, which actually has a new name - RV790. XFX Radeon HD4890, as well as other reference cards of this type, has a maximal power consumption of 190W, which is 30W more compared to HD4870 models. Since PCI-E slot can provide 75W of power, the additional 2 x 75W are ensured via two six-pin PCI-E connectors.

So, XFX Radeon HD4890 is intended for whom? Certainly not for the owners of the good copies of Radeon HD4870 accelerators with 1GB of memory because they would probably not profit from selling the existing model and upgrading to the new one. However, the owners of Radeon HD4870 with 512MB of memory can find the upgrade option interesting. The upgrade option becomes even more realistic if you have Radeon HD4850 or a weaker model. When it comes to the competition, the fastest RV790 card is certainly faster than the old GeForce GTX260 model, which will be even harder to find in stores at its real price once the new GeForce appears. So for now, we can only say that this card will be a real hit in its class.

XGCDB team.