MSI Radeon 4850 R4850-V101 Video Card Review :: MSI R4850 512MB Radeon HD 4850 Card

MSI has given their version of the HD 4850 a special cooling system. Modern video cards like the HD 4850 require active cooling of the graphics chip in order to keep them cool under load as even 55 nanometer graphics chips can get warmer than 60C under load sometimes exceeding that by a large factor up to 70 degrees Celsius or even more while running tests. The other 4850 cards I’ve tested showed no problems with stability even at high running temperatures.

MSI decided to go with a 2-slot cooling solution on their HD 4850 card. While it is sometimes preferable to go with single slot solutions a 2-slot solution is the norm for high performance video cards. MSI uses a dual slot aluminum heatsink with four copper heatpipes leading out of the graphics chip to the heatsink exterior. This keeps the card 10C cooler under load than the standard ATI cooler on the other card. A 9-fin fan blows air through the entire cooling assembly to keep the card cool.

The rest of the design of this card is identical in appearance and form to ATI’s reference design for the HD 4850. The memory chips are laid out identically to the reference board and the circuitry and capacitors are laid out exactly the same as ATI’s reference design. MSI chose to focus on cooling the graphics chip rather than fool around with the layout, which is a good thing. The rear of the card has the Serial Number and Part number stickers which allow the user to identify the card when needing RMA service.

The card is a CrossFireX capable video card. Crossfire allows up to four video cards to be used on the same motherboard if the motherboard supports it and has the requisite number of available slots. There are two Crossfire bridges on the top of the card to allow daisy-chaining of cards from one to another. ATI claims that using more than one card is very efficient and you can get over 3x performance over a single card.

The input and output area of the video card is important in determining what monitors can be used by the video card and system. The MSI HD 4850 comes with the standard Dual Link DVI-I ports on the IO, and an S-Video out port for connecting to a television. This allows the use of up to two 2560x1600 monitors at the same time. The video card has a 6-pin power connector for the extra power it needs beyond the 75W provided by the PCI Express 2.0 slot.