MSI GTX970 Gaming Review

MSI GTX970 Gaming Review

Introduction

It can’t have escaped your notice that the latest Maxwell GPUs have been released from nVidia. Normally this means us having to endure a reference model with the high temperatures and noise that usually entails whilst wondering what the partner cards will bring to the table.

Today though we’re going straight out of the blocks with one of those partner cards, and one of the most consistently impressive manufacturer models of recent years, the MSI Gaming. 

It’s nearly impossible to remember the old days when MSI were strictly for people on a budget who accepted the mediocre looks in exchange for affordability. Since the original Dragon appeared heralding the MSI Gaming range it has been a tale of success after success. Excellent design ethos matched to reliability and performance, whilst not breaking the bank.

Is the GTX970 Gaming similarly good? Let’s find out.

Technical Specifications

Obviously pure CUDA power isn’t the whole story, but compared to the GTX770 the GTX970 has 128 extra CUDA Cores, bringing the total up to 1664. For comparison purposes the GTX780 had 2304 and the GTX780Ti a whopping 2880. With a refinement of the architecture that is inevitable when you give a R&D department time and money, which the nVidia gurus have in spades, we’re interested to know how much performance nVidia have squeezed from such a relatively low amount of CUDA Cores, especially when coupled to the MSI overclock and cooler.

It’s also worth noting the dimensions of the MSI GTX970 Gaming, which is a darn sight smaller than previous high-end nVidia models.

MSI GTX970 Gaming Review Â