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We have reviewed many of the GTX970 and GTX980 partner cards in the last month, but there is no question that MSI are leading the way with their Gaming 4G series of cards. Their GTX970 Gaming 4G was our personal favourite at launch, and the GTX980 Gaming 4G on show today is going to be a very tough act to follow.
The MSI Gaming 4G products are without doubt the best looking video cards money can buy. A lot of effort has gone into the appearance, and while for many it will be a case of ‘fit and forget' there are many enthusiast users on our busy Facebook page adopting these into windowed system builds. If you are opting for a red and black system colour scheme, the Gaming 4G is as good as it gets.
As a high resolution gaming card you would be hard pressed to get anything better on the market today. The ‘out of the box' clock speeds of 1,216mhz are at the upper end of the scale, and there is plenty of additional headroom if you are willing to use a software tool such as MSI Afterburner. We managed to increase the Boost clock to 1,464mhz before minor artifacting would occur.
The new MSI Twin Frozr cooler is class leading and while very closely matched to the Asus Direct CU cooler fitted to the Strix, it left with a 1c advantage. Sure, in the real world you would be hard pressed to notice any difference, but as minor as it is, the MSI card has a miniscule advantage.
If you want to buy an MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G they are available from Overclockers UK for £479.99 inc vat. There is a deal however this week, with a price drop to £439.99 inc vat. When weighing everything in, we come to the conclusion that this is the best GTX980 we have tested, to date.
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Pros:
- the Cameron Diaz of GPU's.
- very quiet.
- very high build quality
- 4GB of GDDR5 memory.
Cons:
- the reference GTX980 is excellent and cheaper.
- still need two of them for smooth 4k gaming.
Kitguru says: The MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G is a looker, but it is also one of the fastest cards on the market.
