MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III 3GD5/OC Review

The MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III 3GD5/OC is shipped in a nicely designed box with a high resolution image taking center stage next to a list of specifications.

The gatefold style box highlights the ‘military' technology which we have covered many times before. MSI use Hi-C Capacitors and Solid Capacitors for extra long life and reliability. They have adopted Solid State Choke with pure iron cores to eliminate any possibility of ‘buzzing'.

The bundle is strong. MSI include a software disc, several power and video adapters and literature on the product. There is also a Crossfire cable included for multi card configurations.

This is the third revision of the Twin Frozr cooler. It is a metal design with twin fans, PWM controlled. MSI use ‘Propeller Blades' which are meant to enhance the angle of airflow, increasing it by 20 percent at the same speeds and blade diameter. This card is built around a dark PCB as shown in the images. It is quite heavy due to the metal construction.

The R7950 is Crossfire capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations thanks to the dual connectors above.

The card takes power from two 6 pin PCI e power connectors.

It is a dual slot design with a full sized DVI and HDMI port, and two mini Display Port connectors. It is Eyefinity capable and can power up to 6 displays. This solution can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams from the HDMI and mini Displayport connectors at the rear of the card. The GPU can support 3GHz HDMI with frame packing support for Stereo 3D.

The cooler is about as good as you can get. It is a direct contact design formed around five thick heatpipes. These heatpipes split into two racks of high density aluminum heatsinks on either side of the base. This base is nickel plated copper to ensure that heat is transferred as quickly as possible. It is very heavy and feels very substantial. MSI are using high quality Hynix GDDR5 memory.

Above, a GPUz overview of the hardware. This highlights the core clock increase from 800mhz to 880mhz over the reference card design. The 3GB of memory is connected via a 384 bit memory interface. The card is equipped with 32 ROPS and 1792 unifed shaders, which is reduced from 2048 on the higher cost HD7970.

Become a Patron!