MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC Review

[siopao1984]

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MSI has gone with their usual arctic blue theme on the box and are not afraid to tout the merits of their flagship Twin Frozr III cooler which they claim is better performing and quieter than the stock reference blower. They also mention that the card is ready for 3DMark 11 (which MSI features prominently inside the benchmark) and has "Military Class III" certificationBack of BoxAccessories and Documentation - VGA-DVI dongle, Mini-DP to HDMI, Crossfire Bridge and two Molex to 6-pin PCIe convertorsThe

MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC is overclocked by default to 880/1300MHz

Back of Card - Apart from some gratuitous silkscreen markings and stickers, the card is similar to the Sapphire HD 7950 that we reviewed earlier, the implication being it is using a reference PCB design. One nice addition would be a backplate to prevent warping and accidental electrical shorts from the giant CPU heatsinks that we see today.MSI's 7950 measures 11.25 inches long and uses 2 x 6 pin PCIe connectors which provide up to 150W extra in addition to the 75W from the PCIe slotLike all the other Radeon 7950 / 7970s we've seen so far, the

MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC has the same layout - a single DVI-D, HDMI and 2 mini-DP connectors for hooking up to up to 6 displays. The card only takes up 2 slots which means quad Crossfire operation is possible with top of the line motherboards and enclosures.

Read more: MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC Review by VR-Zone.com

[siopao1984]

After taking the cooler off, we see a black metal plate covering some critical (and hot) components and preventing the card from warping.



Sticky thermal tape used for heat transfers



Once completely stripped, we see that the MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC is indeed using AMD's reference board design, which is not necessary a bad thing as it means it would have been properly and thoroughly validated.



The board uses all solid capacitors and the CHL8228G VRM also makes its way here, driving 6+2 phases for power delivery



The same Hynix GDDR5 used in a ring bus clocked at 1300MHz by default



Moving on, we examine the gorgeous Twin Frozr III Cooler which first appeared in MSI's previous generation AMD and NVIDIA cards.



No qualms about the fin count or density here



5 heat pipes (dubbed SuperPipe) attached to a Nickel plated copper base.



The two 80mm fans are made by Power Logic and are rated at 0.35A @ 12V DC with 4-pin PWM capability. According to the manufacturer spec sheet, it has an max air flow of 34.85CFM, 3.626 mm-H20 of static pressure and up to 37.5dB of noise.

[siopao1984]

Cooling Dexterity

As we've established in our earlier review of the HD 7950, the 'Tahiti Pro' GPU actually has a remarkably small power footprint/TDP and it shows here. In our OCCT GPU Torture tests, the Twin Frozr III cooler at 100% fan speed helped the card to maintain an outstanding 51 degrees celcius (full load, room temperature about 22 degrees) and noise levels were still a tolerable hum, which you won't notice from a distance inside a good quality case.





Overclocking

At stock voltage (1.03V), we could run the card at 1030/1800MHz without any visual artifacts, up from 880/1300MHz, which is excellent by any standards.





Raising the core voltage to 1.2V (any further and overvoltage protection would kick in), we manage to push the core clocks further to 1185MHz. Most remarkably the Twin Frozr III cooler still kept the card at a lukewarm 61 degrees celcius.





Y U NO RUN BENCHMARKS?

The MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC uses the exact same reference PCB and drivers (Catalyst 11.12 RC11) as the Sapphire HD 7950 we reviewed earlier. Running our benchmark suite again would be just a waste of our time so we just focused on maximum overclocks. In summary it is faster than the GTX 580 in all neutral benchmarks, and came close especially in games to the significantly more expensive king of the hill HD 7970 which has has 12.5% more compute units.

Link to previous benchmarks



Conclusion

We have already seen in many reviews on the web that the 28nm AMD Tahiti GPUs smashes previous records in absolute performance, energy efficiency and overclocking potential. The Twin Frozr III cooler used in our MSI Radeon 7950 today, coupled with mature and regularly bug-fixed software in the form of MSI Afterburner, is an example of how competition can push the boundaries of innovation and drive costs down (vapour chambers and blowers on reference designs are relatively expensive). To avoid boring our readers. we hope to be able to review a non-reference PCB Tahiti with a beefier power circuitry for more interesting overclocks soon.

Price: SGD (will be updated)


Pros

Despite costing less, offers HD 7970 levels of performance in comtemporary titles
Ubiquitous MSI Afterburner O/C software
Phenomenal power/performance ratio
Efficient and quiet dual fan cooling solution
35% core overclock when overvolted, excellent memory headroom

Cons

O/C abilities hurt by its reference power design - cooling system felt like it could handle higher core voltages / TDPs

[denzel]

nindot unta wala lay kwarta ahahahaha

[Archfear]

tan-aw rako kutob ani.... overkill for recent games + overkill sa bulsa... wahehehehe..

[TiMoY]

grabeh ka power efficient ani nga card.suyaa nko ani oi.