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.