MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G

1. Introduction2. MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G3. High Res Gallery4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Vantage6. 3DMark 117. 3DMark8. Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. Grid AutoSport (1440p)10. Grid AutoSport (Ultra HD 4K)11. Tomb Raider (1440p)12. Tomb Raider (Ultra HD 4K)13. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (1440p)14. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Ultra HD 4K)15. Grand Theft Auto 5 (1440p)16. Grand Theft Auto 5 (Ultra HD 4k)17. Metro Last Light Redux (1440p)18. Metro Last Light Redux (Ultra HD 4K)19. Thermal Dynamics/IR Thermometer Readings20. Acoustics Performance21. Overclocking22. Power Consumption23. Closing Thoughts24. View All Pages

We have reviewed many GTX980 Ti partner cards in recent weeks and today the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G makes a somewhat belated appearance in our labs. This high end board is actually one of the cheapest flagship, overclocked Ti's currently available – hitting the £599.99 inc vat point – £30 less than the Gigabyte G1 Gaming and £60 less than the Asus STRIX Gaming Direct CU 3.

I said it many months ago, but the MSI Gaming series of cards are in my own humble opinion the finest looking of all the brands. Obviously opinions will vary but I adore the red inner fan shroud counterpointed with the black section and aggressive red claw stripes. Many of MSI's competitors have tried to copy this elegant design, but have failed. It still holds the beauty points in my book – the Cameron Diaz of graphics cards.

Aesthetically we are satisfied, however technically MSI haven't cut corners. The company are using dual Torx fans which maximise airflow and reduce flow noise – they spin down under low load situations and are designed to direct airflow towards the thick heatpipes. Obviously MSI focus on their use of ‘Military Class 4 components' which are certified to MIL-STD-810G standards for top stability and reliability. MSI are using Hi-c capacitors, solid capacitors and new SFC components  to ensure maximum longevity and stability.

GPU	GeForce GTX960	Geforce GTX970	GeForce GTX980	Geforce GTX 980 Ti	Geforce GTX Titan X
Streaming Multiprocessors	8	13	16	22	24
CUDA Cores	1024	1664	2048	2816	3072
Base Clock	1126 mhz	1050 mhz	1126 mhz	1000 mhz	1000 mhz
GPU Boost Clock	1178 mhz	1178 mhz	1216 mhz	1075 mhz	1076 mhz
Total Video memory	2GB	4GB	4GB	6GB	12GB
Texture Units	64	104	128	176	192
Texture fill-rate	72.1 Gigatexels/Sec	109.2 Gigatexels/Sec	144.1 Gigatexels/Sec	176 Gigatexels/Sec	192 Gigatexels/Sec
Memory Clock	7010 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz
Memory Bandwidth	112.16 GB/sec	224 GB/s	224 GB/sec	336.5 GB/sec	336.5 GB/sec
Bus Width	128bit	256bit	256bit	384bit	384bit
ROPs	32	56	64	96	96
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
TDP	120 watts	145 watts	165 watts	250 watts	250 watts

The Nvidia GTX980 Ti ships with 2816 CUDA cores and 22 SM units. The memory subsystem of the GTX980 Ti consists of six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit) with 6GB of GDDR5 memory.

The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G has received a clock boost over Nvidia’s reference card, with final speeds set at 1,178 mhz(core)/1,279mhz (boost). The memory is also overclocked, from default speeds of 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective) to 1,774mhz (7.1Gbps effective) – both MSI and ASUS decided to tweak the memory a little above reference which is always good to see.

MSI box artwork is very distinctive and immediately recognisable. Their dragon mascot makes an appearance alongside the product name and branding.

The rear of the box highlights some of the technical product specifications- including the Zero Frozr cooler, SuperSu Pipe and Torx Fans.

The accessories bundle includes a software disc, literature on the product and power and video converter cables.

This is a great looking card, from all angles. MSI have fitted a custom backplate to the card, featuring a subtle dragon etching on one side.

The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G is SLI capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. It takes power from two eight pin power connectors.

We loved the red I/O port covers that much we had to take a photo ‘before and after'. The MSI card ships with a single DVI-D port. There are three DisplayPorts 1.2 and a single HDMI 2.0 port along the bottom of the I/O plate. If you wish, you can use all these ports at the same time for triple monitor gaming.

The MSI card is equipped with nickel plated copper heatpipes which run from the core across the length of the PCB.


Four thick heatpipes run into two seperate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core block. The card itself has a plate covering the memory, and the VRMs are actively cooled as well.

An overview of the hardware in the latest version of GPUz – as discussed on the previous page. This overclocked GM200 core runs at 1178mhz (1,279mhz boost) and is built on the 28nm process. The GTX980 Ti has 96 ROPs, 176 Texture units (Titan X has 192 texture units) and 2,816 CUDA Cores (Titan X has 3,072 CUDA Cores). The 6GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1774mhz (7.1Gbps effective) and is connected via a 384 bit memory interface. This is the second GTX980 Ti we have tested to date with tweaked, enhanced memory settings.
On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken with a Canon 1DX and Canon 28-70mm F2.8 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.





For the last 14 days we have been testing and retesting all the video cards in this review with the latest 15.6 Catalyst and 353.30 Forceware drivers. We have also selected some new game sections to benchmark during our ‘real world runs’.

If you want to read more about our test system, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q 4k and Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.

Due to reader feedback we have changed the 1600p tests to 1440p, and we have also disabled Nvidia specific features such as Hairworks in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as it can have such a negative impact on partnering hardware.

Anti Aliasing is also now disabled in our tests at Ultra HD 4K as readers have indicated they don’t need it at such a high resolution.

If you have other suggestions please email me directly at zardon(at)kitguru.net.

Cards on test:
MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G (1,178 mhz core / 1774 mhz memory)

ASUS STRIX Gaming GTX 980 Ti DirectCU 3 (1,216 mhz core / 1800mhz memory)

Visiontek Radeon R9 Fury X 4GB (1,050mhz core / 500mhz memory) & (1,130mhz core)

Sapphire R9 295X2 (1,018 mhz core / 1,250 mhz memory)

Nvidia Titan Z (706mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming (1,152mhz / 1,753 mhz memory)

Nvidia Titan X (1,002 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Nvidia GTX 980 Ti (1,000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Asus GTX980 Strix (1,178 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Sapphire R9 390 X 8GB (1,055 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory) & (1,144mhz core / 1631 mhz memory)

Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (1,010 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory) & (1,125mhz core / 1637 mhz memory)

Sapphire R9 290 X 8GB (1,020 mhz core / 1,375 mhz memory)

Asus R9 290 Direct CU II ( 1,000 mhz core / 1,250 mhz memory)

Asus R9 285 Strix (954 mhz core / 1,375 mhz memory)

Palit GTX970 (1,051 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

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

Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Grand Theft Auto 5
Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt
Metro Last Light Redux

We perform 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.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

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 final score of 63,546 points places the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G just behind the Asus STRIX Gaming GTX980 Ti Direct CU 3. This is a great first indicator of performance with older Direct X 10 games.
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.

Performance results from the highly overclocked GTX980 Ti cards are very close. The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G scores 24,324 points putting it close to the very top of the chart.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”


The GTX980 ti cards all score exceptionally well in the latest Direct X 11 benchmark from Futuremark. The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G scores close to the top of the chart, just behind the ASUS Strix model.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 test at 2560×1440 with quality setting at ULTRA, Tessellation at NORMAL, and Anti-Aliasing at x2.

Tessellation performance from the high end Nvidia cards is stellar. As we would expect, the MSI, Gigabyte and ASUS boards all deliver very similar results.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).

We test with the image quality on ULTRA and 8x anti aliasing enabled.

Excellent performance at 1440p, averaging a staggering 145 frames per second. Complete overkill, yes.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).

We test with the image quality on ULTRA and 8 anti aliasing enabled.

If you want to play this game at 4K with maximum image quality settings, then the Titan X and GTX980 Ti cards deliver a constant 60+ frames per second. Additionally AMD's Fury X (when overclocked to 1130mhz) is able to maintain 60+ frame rates too at all times. For many, this super smooth consistency over 60 frames per second is very important – especially with racing games.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).

We test at 1440p with the ‘ULTIMATE’ image quality profile selected.

No problems powering Tomb Raider at 1440p, averaging over 100 frames per second and maintaining a frame rate at 80 or above at all times.Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).

We test at 3840×2160 (4K) with the ‘ULTIMATE’ image profile selected. We normally reduce the image quality profile to ‘ULTRA’ at this resolution, but we decided to keep it at the highest image quality possible.

At Ultra HD 4K resolutions, the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G shines, holding frame rates at 40 or greater at all times.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, the series’ protagonist, whose story to date has been covered in the previous versions. Continuing from The Witcher 2, the ones who sought to use Geralt are now gone. Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission whilst the world order itself is coming to a change.

Geralt’s new mission comes in dark times as the mysterious and otherworldly army known as the Wild Hunt invades the Northern Kingdoms, leaving only blood soaked earth and fiery ruin in its wake; and it seems the Witcher is the key to stopping their cataclysmic rampage. (Wikipedia).

We test with the highest image quality settings, although I have disabled the Nvidia Hairworks option specifically as it does kill frame rate on many cards. Graphics Preset is on ULTRA and Postprocessing is on HIGH.

I have played The Witcher 3 for around 85 hours and I have completed the single player campaign. I tested the game today by playing 4 different save game stages for 5 minutes each, then averaging the frame rate results for a real world indication of performance – one of the map sections we tested is one of the most demanding in the game and our results can be considered strictly ‘worst case'. The Witcher 3 is a dynamic world, so it is important to run tests multiple times to remove any discrepancies.

This is one of the greatest PC games ever released in my opinion, so I spent around a total of 48 hours benchmarking it for this review alone – it should be on your must have list, if you don't have it already.

At these high settings at 1440p, only the most powerful cards on test can hold frame rates above 30 at all times. The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G scores close to the top of the chart, just behind the Asus STRIX GTX980 Ti.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, the series’ protagonist, whose story to date has been covered in the previous versions. Continuing from The Witcher 2, the ones who sought to use Geralt are now gone. Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission whilst the world order itself is coming to a change.

Geralt’s new mission comes in dark times as the mysterious and otherworldly army known as the Wild Hunt invades the Northern Kingdoms, leaving only blood soaked earth and fiery ruin in its wake; and it seems the Witcher is the key to stopping their cataclysmic rampage. (Wikipedia).

We test with the highest image quality settings, although I have disabled the Nvidia Hairworks option specifically as it does kill frame rate on many cards. Graphics Preset is on ULTRA and Postprocessing is on HIGH.

I have played The Witcher 3 for around 85 hours and I have completed the single player campaign. I tested the game today by playing 4 different save game stages for 5 minutes each, then averaging the frame rate results for a real world indication of performance – one of the map sections we tested is one of the most demanding in the game and our results can be considered strictly ‘worst case'. The Witcher 3 is a dynamic world, so it is important to run tests multiple times to remove any discrepancies.

This is one of the greatest PC games ever released in my opinion, so I spent around a total of 48 hours benchmarking it for this review alone – it should be on your must have list, if you don't have it already.

At Ultra HD 4K these settings are very demanding, even the GTX980 Ti's struggle to maintain 30fps or greater at all times.Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.

Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.

The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).

We maximised every slider – FXAA was enabled, although we left all other Anti Aliasing settings disabled – based on reader feedback from previous reviews. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits’ was turned ‘ON’.


We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy. The game demanded around 3.5GB of GPU memory at 1440p and just over 4GB at 4K.

Excellent game performance from the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G, averaging almost 80 frames per second.
Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.

Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.

The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).

We maximised every slider – FXAA was enabled, although we left all other Anti Aliasing settings disabled – based on reader feedback from previous reviews. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits’ was turned ‘ON’.


We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy. The game demanded around 3.5GB of GPU memory at 1440p and just over 4GB at 4K.

The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G delivers a perfectly playable game experience, although if you want a consistent 60 frames per second at these ultra high image quality settings, an SLi configuration would be needed.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

We benchmark at some of the most intensive sections of the game, causing frame rates to dip. Many sections of the game are much smoother than this – so again, this is a strictly ‘worst case scenario'.

Excellent performance, holding above 60 frames per second at all times.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality- High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

Great performance, holding at 40 frames per second or more at all times.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – 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 cooler handles the job well, holding a 66c load when gaming although the Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming manages 62c in the same circumstances.

We install the graphics card into our system and measure temperatures on the back of the PCB with our Fluke Visual IR Thermometer/Infrared Thermal Camera. This is a real world running environment.

Details shown below.


The backplate on the MSI GTX980 Ti delivers great results, ensuring there are really no hotspots across the full length of the card. Our thermal imaging camera shows that the hottest part of the card are the thick heatpipes which emerge at the top edge. These are showing temperature spikes around 58c under extended load – which are fantastic results.

We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

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. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. 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 Refrigerator
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 GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G delivers great cooling performance and remains reasonably quiet at all times. It is very similar in noise levels to the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming and it would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two in any kind of real world test. The Aus STRIX GTX980 Ti DCU 3 is the quietest GTX980 Ti we have tested to date.

On a side note, even when stressed under very unrealistic conditions the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G did not exhibit any coil whine under load.
To overclock today, we used the latest version of the ASUS GPU Tweak software – which was supplied to us for this review.


We managed to increase the boost speed to 1,4464mhz translating into a 12.9% increase over the ‘out of the box' results. The GDDR5 memory could be pushed to 1885mhz (7.54Gbps effective) before any artifacting would occur.
We measure power consumption from the whole system when idle and when gaming, excluding the monitor.

Power consumption shows that the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G system consumes around 335 watts, almost identical to the Gigabyte GTX980 T1 G1 Gaming.
If you are shopping for a new GTX980 Ti graphics card you are literally spoilt for choice this summer.

The three major motherboard manufacturers all have fantastic solutions available and we rate the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming (review HERE) and Asus Strix GTX980 Ti Gaming (review HERE) very highly indeed. The Gigabyte solution runs the coolest while ASUS have opted to run their triple fans at very low speeds to achieve ultra quiet results while the high clock speeds ensure the fastest ‘out of the box' performance levels.

The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G is a great gaming card and it is clear that MSI have tried to balance performance and cooling efficiency equally. The Asus STRIX card is quieter and faster out of the box, but the MSI fan profile is slightly more aggressive. This is only part of the story when we take a closer look however.

When we factor in that both Gigabyte and Asus have adopted triple fan coolers for their flagship GTX980 Ti models it is quite remarkable that MSI seem to be coping very well with only two. The MSI card isn't the coolest running, and it isn't the fastest either, but it has no discernible weaknesses. I can't help but wonder how the Gaming 6G would perform if MSI adopted a new triple fan cooler this year. Adding another high grade fan can mean slower running speeds with reduced noise – equally so fan speeds can be increased for greater cooling efficiency.

Manufacturers like MSI tend to release their graphics cards with plenty of headroom available, and the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G scores well in this regard. Boost speeds could be increased by a further 13% without any hint of artifacting or instability.

You can buy the MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G from Overclockers UK for £599.99 inc vat. It is £30 cheaper than the Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming, and £60 cheaper than the ASUS Strix GTX980 Ti Direct CU III.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• the most attractive graphics card on the market.
• excellent build quality.
• backplate helps reduce hot spots, and it looks great too.
• both core and memory are overclocked above reference.
• excellent 4K performance.
• HDMI 2.0 support.
• plenty of core clock headroom.
• no coil whine.
• cheaper than the Gigabyte and ASUS GTX980 Ti.

Cons:

• Another fan with a minor cooler redesign should be the next move for MSI.

Kitguru says: The MSI GTX980 Ti Gaming 6G is a stunning looking card, and under the hood it is just as impressive. Performance is first class and it is also less expensive than the flagship GTX980 Ti's from Gigabyte and ASUS.

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