MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr 2GB OC
- Details
- Category: Video Cards
- Published: Thursday, 13 September 2012 13:00
- Written by garfi3ld
As you guys may have noticed, today Nvidia introduced their GTX 660 and GTX 650 cards. We put an overclocked reference design to the test. Now it’s time to take a look at what MSI has to offer. Our last video card review from MSI had an interesting dual fan design that we had never seen before. This time around we are taking a look at the GTX 660 Twin Frozr 2GB OC edition. That may be a lot to say, but if our last experience with an MSI card is any indication this could be an interesting model to keep an eye out for. Let’s take a look at what MSI has done different from the base reference design.
It wasn’t that long ago that we had the chance to take a look at the GTX 660 Ti and check out its amazing performance at the $300 price point. Along with the copy of Borderlands 2 that was bundled with it at launch I was impressed with its price. Of course there are still people who can’t afford that price point. Because of this, Nvidia continues to fill in its Kepler lineup, today introducing both their GTX 660 and GTX 650. We will take a look at what the launch is all about and then put our EVGA GTX 660 Superclocked 2Gb to the test at both stock and overclocked speeds to show you the performance difference when you pick up an overclocked model like the one provided by EVGA today.
Sapphires selection of cards for the HD 7000 series has been impressive to say the least. On top of having stock and overclocked versions of every model, they also have a few different models like the 
The video card market in the past 8 months has been filled with lots of up and downs. Both AMD and Nvidia have been going back and forth as they introduce their new product lineups. Kepler specifically has been especially impressive in the efficiency and power side of things. Even still there are a lot of people who have been holding out from throwing down almost $400 on a GTX 670 because of its price. Today a lot of those people will finally get the chance to see what else Nvidia has to offer. The GTX 660 Ti is launching at a sup $300 price point and today we will be taking our first look at a Superclocked 2Gb model from our friends over at EVGA. I’m just as excited as you are to find out how it will perform. The price point puts it up against the HD 7870, but how will they compare in performance. 
We have taken a look at HD 7770’s from both Sapphire and XFX. But that only covers a small portion of the AMD GPU market, when I was given a chance to take a look at MSI’s offering, I jumped at the chance. I know what to expect as far as performance, but what I am especially interested in is how MSI does their cards differently. MSI has a unique design that allows you to add a second fan on top of the original fan; I am really curious how this will work out. Let’s take a look.
Now that we have seen all of the various stock and overclocked versions of the HD 7000 series cards, some of the more interesting variations are starting to trickle out. A good example of this is from Sapphire, not only do they have a WIDE variety of versions. They are actually introducing a new card today, the Sapphire HD 7870 FLeX. For those of you who have been around for a while, you have seen us cover their FLeX lineup before. With the FLeX lineup allowing you to run three monitors in Eyefinity without any active adapters, it is perfect for someone who is already running multiple monitors. As we have seen in the past, if you plan on gaming in Eyefinity you need to have the power to push your favorite games, the HD 7870 is the fastest FLeX card we have tested to date, if any card can do it, it should.
Not everyone is looking to spend $500 on their video card, in some cases that is the total budget for a build. When you are up against a wall trying to pack the best performance you can get into a budget build you still want to get the most performance you can out of your video card. That’s where cards like the XFX R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation come into play. XFX has taken the styling and cooling from their high end cards and combined it with the price of budget cards like the HD 7750. Today we are going to take a look at how those two things do combined in XFX’s R7750 Black Edition Double Dissipation.
Earlier this year when AMD introduced the HD 7770 we took a look at cards from both Sapphire and XFX. Although we were impressed with the cards performance it was a little ill-timed due to AMD still clearing out discounted back stock. Three months later we are able to revisit the situation with today’s release of Sapphires new HD 7770 Vapor-X. With Sapphires Vapor chamber cooling technology along with a nice overclock over the reference design, the Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X could be a great option for a gamer on a limited budget. Let’s take a look.
When Nvidia launched Kepler with the GTX 680 I was impressed with the launch price of the card but even at such a great value it is still out of reach for some people. Just because you can’t afford the top card doesn’t mean you don’t want to experience Kepler’s performance. Of course it was only a matter of time before we saw Nvidia filling in the gaps in their product line, starting first with the GTX 690 then going to the next step down from the GTX 680, the GTX 670. Today we get to have a look to see how the performance compares to both the GTX 680 as well as AMD’s offerings. We are also very curious how it compares to the GTX 580, a card that has found its way into most of our office PC’s. 
You have all seen and heard the rumors for months now about Nvidia’s upcoming GPU code named Kepler. When we got the call that Nvidia was inviting editors out to San Francisco to show us what they have been working on we jumped at the chance to finally put the rumors to rest and see what they really had up their sleeve. Today we can finally tell you all the gory details and dig into the performance of Nvidia’s latest flagship video card. Will it be the fastest single GPU card in the world? We finally find out!
Yesterday we took a look at the XFX R7870 Black Edition OC and really liked it. It seemed to fall into a nice sweet spot between price and performance. Today we are going to take a look at what looks to be the same card but bring the R7850 not the R7870, there are a few key differences. There are major differences in both power usage and compute performance between the two cards. I am really curious how this will translate to the performance and ultimately the price/performance that make the R7870 an idea card to pick up. Will the R7850 be an even better deal or a card to pass on?
AMD’s 7970 launch was very exciting but when it came to the lower priced HD 7700 series cards the reception was lackluster, mostly because of pricing issues. We still haven’t found the card that falls right into the sweet spot for performance vs. value while still being able to play anything you throw at it. These cards are rare, like the 8800 GTS G92 edition or the HD 6950 with the ability to reflash to unlock more performance. With the HD 7900 series cards being pricy and HD 7700’s series cards not having the power behind them. I am really hopping the HD 7800 series cards step up to the plate. Today we finally have the chance to take a look at an HD 7800 series card, the XFX R7870 Black Edition Overclocked. With XFX’s amazing cooler and overclock I’m hoping this will be the one.
Haven already taken a look at a 
You guys have seen the results from our testing of both the XFX R7770 Black Edition OC and the Sapphire HD 7770 OC. I'm sure it was fairly expected but here are our Crossfire testing results using the press drivers. As you will see their are still a few crossfire bugs to be worked out just like we saw with our HD 7970 crossfire testing. But when the drivers work right these two cards paired up make for a cheaper sollution to get Performance similar to the HD 7950 and the GTX 580. Not bad for two cards that would cost you around $350 to pick up. Thats $100 less than what it would cost you to get a GTX 580 and close to the same for the HD 7950!
Sapphire is always known for the wide variety of cards they product for each card series. The HD 7770 is no exception. This time around we are taking a look at their HD 7770 Overclocked edition. Apparently the 1 GHz stock clock wasn’t enough for them, so they gave it up bump up to 1150 MHz. With the HD 7770 priced similar to the HD 6770 and HD5770 cards at their launch I am excited to see what this card has to offer. The HD 5770 was a staple in our small form factor builds around the office for a long time. Now it’s time to give them an upgrade!
Not everyone can afford to go with the most expensive video cards on the market; most gamers have a more limited budget. This is mostly due to the fact that there are more gamers from the 13-30 age groups than anything else. Between being too young to work, poor college students, and then young budding family’s money is always tight. When your budget has you building a $600 dollar gaming rig there is no way you will be dedicating all or even half of that towards the video card. It’s important for gaming, but without the rest of your components you’re not going anywhere. That’s where AMD’s new HD 7770 comes in, at a price point that still leaves room in your budget. Of course we need to see how it performs, for that we are taking a look at XFX’s R7770 Black Edition Double D overclocked edition.
With AMD’s new HD 7970’s rocking the boat slightly with both price and performance it’s about time we started to see the slow trickle of GPU’s that will fill in the rest of the HD 7000 series video cards. First on the list is the HD 7950, a card that a lot of people have been waiting for because of the high price of the HD 7970. There is no doubt that it’s not going to outperform the HD 7970, but how will this new card compare to the GTX 580? Today I’m not taking a look at a reference card, we have skipped directly to the XFX Double Dissipation Black Edition Overclocked version, similar in design to what we saw with their R7970.
I recently posted up our HD 7970 crossfire results. AMD released their 8.921.2 RC11 driver update the same day as our last post. Here are updated graphs showing the crossfire performance with the new drivers. I still experienced flashing and artifacts when in game water was in view and our test bench would have odd lockups when left sitting idle for a while. The performance increases with the new drivers are impressive, I hope they work out the rest of the bugs. Two HD 7970's is the best performance you can get currently (short of adding even more cards, lol) but without the driver support its going to be a tough sell. 
Now that we have had a chance to take a look at a reference design HD 7970 and see how dominating one can be I am excited to take a look at XFX’s new Black Edition Overclocked R7970. Unlike most of the other manufactures their version is both overclocked and equipped with their Double Dissipation cooling solution, a heatsink that has to be one of the sexiest coolers on the market. We know how the stock card performs, but how will it perform with a 1000Mhz clock speed and a badass cooler? Let’s find out!