Value Meets Performance: HD 4890 Cards from Gigabyte and MSI

A Closer Look at the Gigabyte HD 4890 1GB OC

If anything, the Gigabyte HD 4890 1GB Ultra Durable is a unique looking card. It is decked out in a Gigabyte-blue PCB and sports the same Zalman VF1050 GPU cooler as we have seen on past Ultra Durable-series of cards. Length-wise, we are looking at the same as the reference-based cards at 9.5”.


The VF1050 has been around for quite a while but it is still considered one of the better GPU coolers on the market. It uses a centrally-mounted 80mm fan that pushes cool air through the anodized aluminum fin array and a quartet of independent heatpipes to move heat away from the core. It is an efficient yet compact setup but we would have liked some heatsinks attached to the memory modules as well even though they run relatively cool.


Unlike some other, higher clocked HD 4890 cards on the market, the Gigabyte OC makes do with a pair of 6-pin PCI-E connectors. It also looks like Gigabyte installed a huge heatsink onto the VRMs in order to dissipate their heat.

The backplate of this card sports all of the connectors one would want. HDMI, DisplayPort and a DVI connector are all included and compatibility for an additional DVI connector is done through an adaptor.