MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition Review

As we said before Nvidia's mid range GTX960 has been some time coming – almost a year after Maxwell was introduced with the GTX750ti. The GTX960 specifically targets the gaming audience with a budget restriction of £200. For many this is the gaming ‘sweet spot'.

The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC reviewed today is priced at £175.99 and while equal in performance to AMD's R9 285, it does drain 43 watts less power at the socket. The Twin Frozr V cooler runs exceptionally quiet under load, and we love the appearance of the solution.

I feel it is the most attractive of all the GTX960 cards that we have reviewed to date.

Looking back to our earlier reviews of the same architecture, The Palit GTX960 Super Jetstream performed very well, but it was let down by a cooling system which was clearly inferior to those found on the ASUS GTX960 Strix OC Edition and MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition. The GPU core on the Palit version of the card runs noticeably hotter (7-8c) under load.

I would be remiss not to mention the somewhat bizarre logic behind MSI's decision to install the ‘Gaming' clock speeds on the cards BIOS (1190mhz).

This MSI solution is marketed by the company highlighting the ‘OC' clock settings, and is sold as the OC Model (shown on the front of the box). Why then place the slower Gaming configuration on the BIOS?

The reality of the lower clock speed means that out of the box, the MSI card is outperformed by both Asus and Palit models. Many users will never install the MSI Gaming App so they will likely be running at the lower 1190mhz clock speeds. This is extremely disappointing, especially for such a renowned, well established company as MSI.

This is how they should have done it: Sell the card with the BIOS at 1,241mhz and set the software based ‘OC' setting to a higher 1,280mhz. As it stands, we wouldn't quite call it mis-advertising, but the clock speed deficit does leave a sour taste in my mouth – I don't agree with forcing the user to install proprietary software then having to select an ‘OC' option to get the advertised clock speeds.

Additionally, some of these MSI cards shipped with a lower BIOS OC speed of 1,216mhz Core/1,279mhz Boost. You can install the new BIOS if you wish to get the full 1,241mhz Core/1304mhz Boost clock speeds. Media vBios + Flash tool + instructions here: http://we.tl/4riYMJScdZ.

Obviously more savvy users won't care too much about the disappointing BIOS related clock speeds, and will use a tool such as MSI Afterburner to overclock the card manually to within an inch of its life. At these speeds the Gaming 2G OC really sings, and can compete with any other GTX960 solution on the market.

You can buy the MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition from Overclockers UK for £175.99 inc vat.

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Pros:

• Maxwell architecture is very efficient.
• beautiful looking card.
• quiet under load.
• low power consumption.
• overclocks well.
• solid performance at 1080p.

Cons:

• Its running at 1190mhz out of the box.
• End user forced to install proprietary MSI software to get advertised OC speeds.

Kitguru says: The MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC Edition is a beautiful looking card. That said, it is actually the slowest of the GTX960's that we have tested, out of the box. Manually overclocking the card gives results.

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