There are overclocked Radeon HD 4890 cards, and then there are overclocked Radeon HD 4890 cards. The difference between the two seems to be that the latter comprises of the "real" RV790OC-class SKU that runs at speeds in excess of 900 MHz, and offers a considerable overclocking headroom. The former, is mainly partners utilizing whatever headroom standard batches of RV790 offer, to come up with factory-overclocked settings that spice up specs-sheets. MSI joined the league of AIBs making a high-end Radeon HD 4890 accelerator, keeping the 1.00 GHz core frequency as a milestone.

Following Sapphire with its Atomic HD 4890 Vapor-X, MSI seems to be readying the R4890 Cyclone. This card uses a cooler similar to what some of its Radeon HD 4870 cousins sport, while using an elaborate, yet standard power circuitry. The cooler consists of a radial heatsink from which 2~4 8 mm heatpipes convey heat to two aluminum fin blocks that are arranged on either sides of the heatsink. A fan nucleates the heatsink, although it didn't make it to the picture. Over to the PCB, MSI does away with the lavish digital PWM circuitry on the reference PCB, and in its place, put a 5+2 phase standard DPAK power circuitry. What's fascinating about this PCB is that it carries the AMD brandmark, leading us to believe that AMD may have come up with a cost-saving PCB design that is available to its AIBs. The R4890 Cyclone is set for launch in the upcoming Computex 2009 event.