Wednesday, April 8th 2009
Powercolor Preparing Non-Reference HD 4890 PCS
Barely a week into the launch of Radeon HD 4890, AMD's partners are already emerging ready with non-reference PCB and cooler designs for the card. One of the first in the league is Powercolor Radeon HD 4890 PCS (Professional Cooling System), a name given to the card owing to its superior cooling system and factory-overclocked parameters. The company seems to have worked on a non-reference PCB design.
The 10-layer PCB breaks away from the reference design with its simpler VRM area consisting of standard chokes and MOSFETs. The design-approach is known to greatly reduce manufacturing costs. The GPU is cooled by a Zerotherm cooler with a large central fan, and aluminum fins to which heat is conveyed by four heat-pipes. The card will feature a rather high clock speeds of 950/1100 MHz (core/memory), against the reference speeds of 850/975 MHz. The price isn't known at this point in time, though we don't expect it to be priced much higher, looking at the design.
Source:
Fudzilla
The 10-layer PCB breaks away from the reference design with its simpler VRM area consisting of standard chokes and MOSFETs. The design-approach is known to greatly reduce manufacturing costs. The GPU is cooled by a Zerotherm cooler with a large central fan, and aluminum fins to which heat is conveyed by four heat-pipes. The card will feature a rather high clock speeds of 950/1100 MHz (core/memory), against the reference speeds of 850/975 MHz. The price isn't known at this point in time, though we don't expect it to be priced much higher, looking at the design.
16 Comments on Powercolor Preparing Non-Reference HD 4890 PCS
Hopefully they have thoroughly tested the cards at those speeds. Powercolor had problems before with non-reference/modified reference HD4870s back when they first came out last year...
i have seen high quility boards that used high end fets that barly got warm under heavy extended load, the problem is most companys use fets that are just up to, or just a little over the spec's needed for the job they are doing.
sure it costs a bit more for higher end fets, but that could be balanced by the lack of need to coole them and also the lower fail rate :)
All the 4850s for example have naked RAM VRM and its considered safe to be so but if u OC a little it gets HOT as hell there.I put a heatsink in mine and i cant even touch it.So i think that the sinks are the only way for this card.IMO anyway!