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4890 Reference Cooler

nheather

nheather

nheather

Associate
Joined
19 May 2004
Posts
1,037
Location
Horsham, West Sussex
Looking to buy a couple of 4890s but not sure which one to go for.

On the one hand, as cheap as possible but I've heard a few negaitive comments about the reference cooler.

The Powercolor is a great price

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

but just has a reference cooler which some have said is noisy and allows the card to get hot.

Is this a real issue?

Cheers,

Nigel
 
The reference cooler is perfectly functional, heat is a complete trash comment that people spout most of the time, graphics cards are designed to be hot, it's just how they are, if they are not above 100 degrees, they are perfectly fine.

Noise is subjective but I will admit a lot of people find ATI cards noisy, if you are worried about noise you will to spend a little bit more and get a card with a non reference cooler, like the Zalman mentioned above or the Sapphire Vapor-X card.
 
Thanks for the comments. You're right about the subjective thing - my PC is pretty noisy at the moment and it doesn't bother me. Just difficult to judge when people complain about a card being noisy what that actually means as you don't know what they are comparing it with.

One persons noisy 4890 might be quite compared with my 8800GTS.

I'm assuming that all cards with a reference cooler are pretty much identical in terms of performance, noise and temps - perhaps warranty is about the only differentiator - does that sound right?

Cheers,

Nigel
 
nheather said:
I'm assuming that all cards with a reference cooler are pretty much identical in terms of performance, noise and temps - perhaps warranty is about the only differentiator - does that sound right?
Click to expand...

Pretty much, some are clocked higher and the Asus card (not sure if OC do the reference one any more) comes with vault changing software, but generaly yes, they are all mostly the same.

Personaly, I would be waiting till the end of this month, as the new ATi cards are coming out within a few months, prices will be driven down and also you could probably get some 2nd hand 4890's dirt cheap in the members market.
 
Someone on here told me that the Sapphire Vapor-X cards are about the quietest, so I'm planning on getting one of those when I finally get to build my new rig. :)
 
I have a sapphire atomic that come with a reference HSF, and its pretty quite. I was expecting it to be loud, but Ive found it to be very reasonable so far.
 
I had one on the old sapphire custom cooler than I found out it was faulty thats probably why it was loud and hot :o
 
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