KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Today we look at a customised, overclocked version of the new Nvidia GTX770 graphics card from MSI. The latest GTX770 is based around the same GK104 GPU that was used in the ever popular GTX680. The GTX770 is priced close to the HD7970 and targets the high end gaming audience who don't want to compromise their frame rate performance at high resolutions. Should this be making your shortlist for a new system upgrade?
Nvidia enjoyed great success with their GTX680 solution, and rightly so. Not only was the card a frame rate monster, but it delivered great power efficiency and the reference cooler was quiet under load. Always a bonus not to be dealing with irritating fan noise during those late evening gaming sessions.
Nvidia partners will be shipping their GTX770 cards in two configurations. 2GB models will target the 1080p gaming audience and a 4GB version will be released at extra cost to tackle those 30 inch and multiple monitor configurations. All GTX770 graphics cards will ship with 7Gbps memory modules, currently the world's fastest GDDR5. Nvidia claim peak memory bandwidth is 224.3Gb/s – or 15% more than last year's GTX680. The MSI MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 OC we are reviewing today ships with 2GB of GDDR5 memory.
The GTX770 also features GPU Boost 2.0 technology currently used in other models such as the GTX Titan and GTX780. This gives the user fine control when overclocking, hardware monitoring and adjusting fan control.
The GTX770 is replacing the GTX670 within Nvidia's lineup. Final pricing of the reference card is around the £330 inc vat point. We don't have confirmed pricing for MSI's Twin Frozr GTX770 OC version, but we expect it to retail for around £360 inc vat.
Nvidia claim that this new solution delivers nearly twice the performance per watt compared against the GTX 570. Our MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 OC sample features a beautiful black heatsink and dark PCB with red accenting on the heatsink. The MSI logo is positioned between the fans.
The MSI Twin Frozr GTX770OC card is overclocked to 1,059 mhz, with a boost clock speed of 1,111 mhz. The memory clock speed is set at 1,753 mhz (7,012 mhz effective) – the highest memory speed we have seen to date. The base speed of the reference GTX770 is 1,046mhz with a typical boost speed of 1,085mhz.
The Nvidia GTX770 ships with 8 SMX units which provide 1,536 CUDA cores. The memory subsystem of the card consists of four 64 bit memory controllers (256 bit).
