With the new ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards due out soon, there's still plenty of surplus of Radeon HD 4890 GPU's just sitting around that need to be sold. The best way to do this is offer something a bit more exciting at a good price. Recently we have seen Sapphire really mess around with the Radeon HD 4890 model in a good way by releasing not only a 2GB version, but also a highly overclocked type sporting a 1000MHz core. Today we will be having a look at an Radeon HD 4890 from ASUS which falls into the Formula series of video cards. With some pretty impressive versions of these GPU out lately already, ASUS will have to offer us something that stands out from the pack. - TweakTown

ASUS Radeon HD 4890 Formula Card Version Review

While the overall design of the box might not be all the different to other ones out there already, the blue and black color scheme does look great and gives us an nice fresh feel for the overall design. Across the top of the box we have the brand while to the right we see ASUS mention that they received various awards. Along the bottom we have the model, in this case it's the HD 4890 and this particular video card falls into the Formula series. In the middle of the box we can see that ASUS promise us a 23% cooler video board, to the right we can see something that resembles a graphics card, but it doesn't paint a real clear picture.

Turning the box over we again have the brand and model across the top, below that we have a list of their power features that the video card offers in a number of languages. Having a look at the graphics card for the first time you can see the pretty outrageous looking cooler that ASUS has chosen to implement. It's clear that this is an own design and not something that we have seen from any other company. Considering their promise of 23% cooler though, we assume there's something pretty special going on. The cooler design is suppose to increase the airflow aerodynamics which in turn is going to give us better temperatures.

ASUS has put together quite a nice video card. We can see that with the clocks on offer, performance is very similar to that of the Sapphire 2GB version that is also overclocked. The most important feature of the board though is the cooling and that's the whole idea behind the Formula line up of video cards. We're glad to see that in this area the video card really shines, and we have to admit, it was going to be interesting just to see how it compared to the Vapor-X version from Sapphire, which also uses its own aftermarket cooling solution. So in that aspect both graphics card are really going after the potential buyers.

While noise levels were similar between the two products, when we looked at the core temperature, the ASUS solution was almost 20% cooler. And if this wasn't enough to get you excited about this particular Radeon HD 4890, you have to remember that ASUS also include the voltage tweak ability that we saw on one of their earlier models. What this software did was give us the ability to achieve a core clock of 1000MHz and a memory clock of 4444MHz effective. Now, with the cooling numbers that we just saw, you can feel certainly confident moving their voltage higher than stock and as such able to enjoy gaming even more.

In typical fashion, an ASUS version of any graphics card is going to set you back a few more dollars when compared to other brands. The good news is though that in this situation with these products, it seems pretty justified. ASUS set out to produce a video card that offers some impressive cooling numbers and it does that. If that's not enough though and you want some more power than with their voltage tweak software, you should be able to head towards an 1GHz core while also going for higher memory clocks.