MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 OC Review

The MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 OC Edition is without question an exceptional graphics card.

First impressions are positive … MSI have really went to town on the cooling solution, adopting a dual 11-blade fan cooling system. The appearance is certainly attractive – the sporty red stripes and ‘Gaming G Series' badge help lift the dark PCB and cooling shroud.

There are certainly no concerns in regards to performance. The MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 OC is significantly ahead of the GTX670 and it also outperformed the similarly priced Sapphire HD7970 3GB Boost OC Edition in most of the synthetic tests and held close to same performance level with the game titles we selected.  Many of the game engines we tested do tend to favour AMD hardware.

Nvidia confirmed that the expected retail price of a reference style board will be £329.99 inc vat. The MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 OC will cost around £359.99 inc vat. ARIA have listed an order page over here, if you wish to buy one.

Nvidia have the pricing spot on, as AMD partners such as Sapphire are charging around £340-£350 inc vat for their customised HD7970 solutions. We would give the performance edge to Nvidia's GTX770, especially if more of their partners are releasing overclocked, custom cooled GTX770 graphics cards in and around £350 inc vat.

Sure, it is a lot of money, but you get a lot of graphics performance for the outlay.

Furthermore, the MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 OC Edition is one of the quietest high performance video cards we have ever tested, inaudible when idle and quiet under load. Thanks to the hefty cooler underneath the shroud, the company have been able to adopt a passive fan profile, spinning between 1,000 rpm and 1,300 rpm. This has helped reduce noise levels significantly and we would be hard pressed to know the GTX770 was in operation most of the time, even in a fairly quiet room.

This is a win for both Nvidia and MSI. It is the new champion around the £350 mark especially when you factor in the remarkably low noise levels.

Pros:

• Superb cooling system.
• very quiet, even under load.
• excellent performance.
• some overclocking headroom.
• competitively priced.

Cons:

• Not cheap.

Kitguru says: A killer custom solution from MSI. We love it.

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