Asus has announced the release of two new graphics cards based on the Radeon HD 4890 and the GeForce GTX 285. These cards are improved versions of the stock cards with components that should allow them to function at lower temperatures and with better overclocking posssibilities. Asus is highlighting the use of multilayer polymer capacitors from Fujitsu, that are already used in some high-end motherboards. In particular they give an ESR that is lower than average and are therefore able to function for a long time, even at high temperatures.
The 3V-1000µF capacitor on the cards is supposed to give 60,000 hours of normal usage and 5000 hours at 108°C. In terms of MOSFETs, the components chosen are supposed to bring temperatures down by 15 degrees compared with those usually used.
Power supply stability and temperatures in load are what Aus has been looking at then. With this armada of changes, the manufacturer has announced higher frequencies for the GTX 285 of 720/1656/2920 MHz instead of 633/1404/1134 MHz on the stock models. The GPU temperatures are also down 15°C and the memory down 8°C . There is 1 GB of GDDR3 on a 512 bit bus. All this comes with a standard type cooling system.
This is not the case with the Radeon HD 4890 that has a new cooler. Thanks to this and and other new components, Asus reports that the GPU functions at 10°C less than on the stock card. Clocks have also been boosted but less than on the GTX 285: they are up from 850/975 MHz (core and memory) to 900 MHz and 1 GHz. It has 1 GB of GDDR5 on a 256 bit bus. It will still be possible to overclock by altering the voltage with the VoltageTweak utility supplied with the SmartDoctor suite.
