MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC (Twin Frozr IV) Review

1. Introduction2. MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC3. MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.09. Gaming: F1 201110. Gaming: Alien V Predator11. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 212. Gaming: Resident Evil 513. Gaming: Far Cry 214. Gaming: Total War Shogun 2 (720p and 1080p)15. Gaming: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim16. Gaming: Battlefield 317. Technical: Thermal Dynamics18. Technical: Acoustics Performance19. Technical: Power Consumption20. Technical: Overclocking21. Closing Thoughts22. View All Pages

We have always been impressed with the high end MSI graphics cards, thanks in part to the excellent Twin Frozr cooling solutions. Today we look at the latest GTX 670 Power Edition which features a factory configured overclock and the latest Twin Frozr IV cooler. Is this the ideal card to be shortlisting for a new gaming system?

Nvidia's GTX670 has proven popular with the enthusiast gaming audience and for good reason. The price point is certainly very tempting, often costing £100+ less than the GTX680 and HD7970 flagship models.

We already know that an overclocked GTX670 will give the more expensive GTX680 a close run battle. On paper, the MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC should be ass kickingly good. That said, it doesn't always translate as we would imagine from paper to the real world, so let's take a look at the card.

The MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC ships with the proprietary Twin Frozr IV metal cooler with multiple heatpipes and dual fan configuration. How does this card slot into the current high end?

Product	Nvidia GTX670	MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC	Nvidia GTX680	AMD HD7970
Transistors	3540m	3540m	3500m	4310m
Core Clock	915 mhz+	1020 mhz+	1006mhz+	925mhz
Memory clock	1,502mhz	1,502mhz	1502mhz	1375mhz
Shaders	1344	1344	1536	2048
ROPs	32	32	32	32
Memory	2GB	2GB	2GB	3GB
Memory bus width	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	384 bit

The MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC has received a core clock increase to 1,020mhz, with an effective Core Boost Clock to 1098MHz. The memory speed hasn’t been changed over the reference card, clocked at 1,502mhz (6,008mhz effective).

Scan are currently taking pre-orders in the UK for £327.20 inc vat, with the release due in the next couple of weeks. Is it worth your hard earned cash?

The MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC ships in an attractively designed box focusing on the cooling solution.

The box opens up in a gatefold design which highlights all the benefits of the design. MSI are keen to highlight the ‘Military Class III Components, including the Hi-C Capacitors and SFC (Super Ferrite Chokes). While many people won't pay much attention to this, you can be sure that MSI haven't cut any corners in regards to selecting the highest grade components for the design. We also noticed the Kitguru award logo bottom right, which earns the box a bonus point.

The bundle includes a reference manual, software disc alongside video and power converters. Not the most extensive bundle, but it is adequate.

The MSI Twin Frozr IV is a substantial cooler, featuring two very specialised fans positioned to direct air directly down across the whole length of the PCB underneath.

MSI call these ‘Propeller Blade' fans which enlarge the angle of airflow while increasing movement by 20 percent.

The card is built around a dark PCB. The heatpipes are clearly visible, but we will take a closer look when we take the card apart shortly.

This card is SLI capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations.

The MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC demands power from two 6 pin PCI E power connectors.

There are two dual link DVI ports, a full sized HDMI port and a full sized DisplayPort. All of these can be used simultaneously with the latest hardware, which places Nvidia on level ground with AMD.

The cooler is comprised of a nickel plated copper base with five thick heatpipes routing into two separate racks of aluminum fins. The MSI GTX 670 Power Edition has an additional cooling plate which surrounds the memory and VRM's.

The MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC is based around the GK104 processor, manufactured on the 28nm process. This ‘OC' model has received a core clock increase to 1,020mhz, with an effective Core Boost Clock to 1,098MHz. It ships with 2GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a 256 bit interface. Memory bandwidth is rated at 192.3 GB/s.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

To test today we are using our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system this year which will make for an interesting market comparison.

Main Test System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC (Forceware 301.42)
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitor: Dell U3011.

Comparison Cards:
KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC
Asus GTX680
AMD Radeon HD7970 GHZ Edition
HD7970
MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III 3GD5/OC
HD7950
Sapphire HD7870 Overclock Edition
HD7870
HD7850
HD6990 (880 core)
HD6970
HD6950
HD6870
Sapphire HD7770 Vapor X Overclock Edition
XFX HD7770 Black Edition S CFx
HD7770 CFx
HD7770
Sapphire HD7750 Ultimate Edition
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670
GTX590 SLi
GTX590
GTX580 SLi
GTX580
GTX570

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Alien V Predator
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Resident Evil 5
Far Cry 2
F1 2011
Total War: Shogun 2
Battlefield 3
Elder Scrolls V: SkyRim

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

The new GTX 670 Power Edition OC delivers a cracking average result, only 1.3 frames per second lower than the AMD HD7970 GHZ Edition!

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The overclocked MSI GTX670 Power Edition manages to squeeze past the reference clocked GTX680. It is only around 1,000 points behind the new AMD HD7970 GHZ Edition, which is a fantastic result.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Another massively impressive score, outperforming the HD7970 GHZ Edition and the reference clocked GTX680, scoring 9,453 points. This is only 400 points behind AMD's last generation dual GPU HD6990.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	192

The hardware scores 192 points out of a possible 210 which is excellent.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

A great result, slightly outperforming the HD7970 GHZ Edition from AMD. The KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC edition is around 9 frames per second faster.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

Great results, around 8 frames per second behind the AMD HD7970 GHZ Edition and the KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

No performance problems with this engine, averaging over 140 frames per second at these settings, equaling the reference clocked GTX680.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

The MSI GTX670 Power Edition OC averages 175 frames per second, at the same level as the reference clocked GTX680.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

The MSI GTX670 Power Edition OC averages 133 frames per second, which is a couple of frames quicker than the reference clocked GTX680. This engine favours Nvidia hardware/drivers, referenced by the HD7970 GHZ frame rate result, some way behind.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

This engine favours AMD Hardware/drivers although the MSI GTX670 Power Edition OC delivers good results, slightly outperforming two HD7770's in Crossfirex.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action role-playing open world video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Skyrim‘s main story revolves around the player character’s efforts to defeat Alduin, a Dragon god who is prophesized to destroy the world. Set two hundred years after Oblivion, the game takes place in the fictional province of Skyrim, upon the continent of Tamriel, and the planet of Nirn. The open world gameplay of the Elder Scrolls series returns in Skyrim; the player can explore the land at will and ignore or postpone the main quest indefinitely. Skyrim has received universal acclaim from critics, selling more than 3.5 million copies within the first 48 hours of release.

The MSI GTX670 Power Edition OC averages 65 frames per second, only a single frame behind the AMD HD7970 GHZ Edition.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

Strong results delivering a similar frame rate to the reference clocked GTX680, and matching the AMD HD7970 GHZ Edition.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The Twin Frozr IV is a fantastic cooler, maintaining 57c under gaming load. This extends to 66c under extended synthetic Furmark load.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The MSI GTX670 Power Edition OC is a very quiet card, almost silent when idle, with the fans spinning around 1,110 rpm. When gaming, they spin up to around 1,900 rpm. At these speeds the solution emits around 35.7 dBa. When under synthetic Furmark load, the fans spin a little higher, at 2,100 rpm. This raises the noise levels a little more, to around 36.3 dBa.

It is audible under load and not the quietest solution we have tested, but it is never intrusive. I do feel they could have traded slightly higher temperatures for a little less noise.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

The GTX670 is efficient, only demanding 157 watts maximum when gaming. This is extended to 182 watts when running the Furmark Synthetic benchmark. Very impressive results.

To overclock today we are using the latest version of MSI Afterburner which allows for voltage tuning.

Despite the healthy ‘out of the box' overclocked settings, we managed to push the core further, by a whopping 17.8 percent to 1,202mhz. The GDDR5 memory could be pushed by almost 14 percent to 1,709mhz (6.8Gbps effective). We are surprised that MSI didn't supply the memory in an overclocked state, even with a modest 75-100mhz boost.

When I looked at AMD's latest HD7970 GHZ Edition earlier this week I genuinely felt deflated. If AMD couldn't be bothered trying to create a new, quality reference cooler for their flagship card, could the only valid measurement of success be based on the fact that it slightly outperformed the reference clocked GTX680?

I have been reviewing products for many years now, certainly long enough to cast a cynical gaze at a mere clock bump, and subsequent price increase.

The new AMD offering was certainly a little faster than the GTX680, but the GHZ card demanded a lot more power than the original HD7970 and it sounded like a damaged lawnmower churning away in the distance. AMD partners have been offering highly tuned HD7970's for months, so analysing an inferior reference card at this stage in the game seemed somewhat disconcerting.

Reviewing this overclocked MSI GTX670 Power Edition today reaffirms my views on the discrete graphics market this summer.

Nvidia's GTX670 is the best value for money high end solution available to the enthusiast audience right now.

It is actually that good that I see no reason for the majority of the user base to spend extra on the GTX680 or HD7970. Nvidia or AMD won't like me saying that, but unless you want to game across three screens or break benchmarking records then I don't see the need to spend the extra £100+.

Obviously there are fantastic overclocked cards priced much higher, such as the KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC … but we need to look at the current pricing and resultant value for money.

The GTX690 is out of the equation for almost everyone. An enthusiast who spends £900 or £1,000 on a video card won't be interested in the budget oriented GTX670, unless they need an ‘additional' card to help with PhysX. Yes, I say that with my tongue slightly in cheek.

£840 is the best price we have seen so far, for an MSI version of the GTX690.

Holy bank balance Batman.

The GTX680 is a great card, and is more reasonably priced, but even these can retail for £540, or more realistically around the £450 mark. If you don't mind a reference cooler then you can save maybe another £30.

For most of the enthusiast audience, this is still out of reach.

This is why Nvidia released the GTX670, to target the hard core gamers who have a budget between £300 and £350. The MSI GTX670 Power Edition OC with Twin Frozr IV cooler which we reviewed today is available for £327.20 inc vat. When we factor in that this card can often keep up with the reference clocked Nvidia GTX680, it declares itself a bargain.

The MSI GTX670 Power Edition OC has many plus points to substantiate a purchasing decision. This solution runs cool, peaking at around 57c under full load, which is well within safety parameters for a long, risk free life. It emits only a modest level of noise, thanks to the dual Propeller fan cooler.

Additionally the card ships with a decent core overclock with full voltage support if you want to squeeze out the last ounce of performance.

If you manually overclock this card by another 150mhz, then it will easily outperform the GTX680. At less than £330 it really is hard to find a weakness, although I feel MSI could have adjusted the fan profile to be slightly less aggressive. A minor increase on the thermal curve would have been a welcome sacrifice for diminished fan noise.

We also don't understand why MSI didn't boost the memory clock by at least 50mhz, there is plenty of headroom.

Pros:

• The Twin Frozr IV is a market leader.
• overclocked core.
• Performance is GTX680 matching.
• Less than £330.

Cons:

• could be quieter.
• memory isn't overclocked.

Kitguru says: A fantastic GTX670 that should find a home in many enthusiast gaming systems.

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