MSI box artwork is immediately distinguishable – their Dragon logo takes pride of place across the front of the box. MSI list some technical information along the bottom of the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G box.
MSI highlight their cooling system on the back of the box, including information on the Torx Fan and SuperSU Pipes built into the heatsink.
The bundle includes a power converter, literature on the product, and a software disc.
MSI also include a ‘Gaming App' on this disc which may prove useful for some people. I have to admit after playing with it for a few minutes I de-installed it completely. The only MSI software I like to run is MSI Afterburner (more on this later in the review).
This is the Cameron Diaz of graphics cards. Slim, beautiful and very sexy. It is built around a black PCB, which earns it bonus points (We don't like the nasty dark brown PCB's). Power is delivered via a 6-phase +2 configuration.
We can see the overhanging cooling heatpipes from the rear.
MSI are using 10cm ‘Torx' fans. The company have finally replaced their fans – and they are reportedly producing 19% ‘better' airflow than the fans used on the Twin Frozr 4 cooler.
MSI have also implemented a similar feature seen on their high end Lightning models – the fans are controlled independently by IC's on the PCB and GPU. MSI claim the independent GPU and PWM cooling reduces noise by up to 1.9dBa.
MSI point out that the new cooler is a ‘Hybrid' design and that they came up with this before ASUS did on their StriX Edition cards – which we really rate highly. They claim if the card is running below 50c then the fans will not spin at all, eliminating noise.
The MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G has two DVI connectors on the back (DVI-D and DVI-I), and a full sized HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort. This HDMI port will handle 4K resolutions at up to 60hz.
The new Twin Frozr 5 heatsink is a little thinner than previous Twin Frozr designs, meaning its a little thinner than 2 full slots. This will help when running multiple cards in SLi configurations.
The card is SLi capable, and takes power from an eight pin and six pin power connector. The Asus GTX970 Strix OC that we also reviewed today only requires a single 8 Pin power connector. In our tests, both cards were perfectly stable in all situations and overclocked to similar levels.
The new MSI cooling system looks formidable. There are four heatpipes in total. These are all running into various positions into aluminum fins on either side of the cooling base. High grade Samsung GDDR5 memory features on this card, cooled by a dedicated heatsink.
Special thanks to Mike over at Techpowerup for sending me over the latest beta version of GPUZ to fully support the Geforce GTX980. I felt like I was living in an episode of Back To The Future seeing a ‘release date’ of 19th September, when I started working on this review around the 13th.
The GM204 GPU is manufactured on the 28nm process. There are 64 ROPS, 104 Texture units and 1,664 CUDA Cores. The core speed is clocked at 1,140mhz with a turbo boost to 1,279mhz. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective).