MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC review

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 01/20/2011 02:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

Overclocking the R6950

Overclocking The R6950

As most of you know, with most videocards you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simply to tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.

What do we need?
One of the best tools for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own AfterBurner which will work with 90% of the graphics cards out there. We can really recommend it, download here.

Where should we go?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard, but it really can be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners, to not increase the frequency any higher than 5% on the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 600 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest that you don't increase the frequency any higher than 30 to 50 MHz.

More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that. Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you'd need to overclock today's tested card anyway, but we'll still show it.

All in all... do it at your own risk.

Original	This sample	Overclocked
Core Clock: 800MHz	Core Clock: 810MHz	Core Clock: 987MHz
Shader Clock: 800MHz	Shader Clock:810MHz	Shader Clock: 987MHz
Memory Clock: 5000MHz	Memory Clock:5000MHz	Memory Clock: 5520MHz

Now we left the fan RPM control at default in all circumstances. We reached a very decent overclock showing a bump in overall performance. Voltage tweaking is not yet option. With AfterBurner (download here) our stable end result was 987 MHz on the core and 5520 MHz on the memory. The temps did not change very much, DBA levels go tiny bit up. You can also try and go a little higher by increasing fan RPM of course, your call to make.

Above we have Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, maxed out image quality settings as before with 4xAA 16xAF

Above we have Battlefield Bad Company 2, maxed out image quality settings as before with 8xAA 16xAF

Above we can see 3DMark 11 - the Performance mode is applied here.

23 pages « < 20 21 22 23

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC review
MSI does what it does best, customizing hardware. They took the R6950 GPU, and threw the rest away. They designed a new PCB loaded with features and overclock potential, slapped some really cool memory on the card and topped off that GPU with the all new Twin Frozr III cooler. We take this card over a full GHz today on the graphics core, and that says a lot about the sturdy design alright.

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC review
A new review on the Radeon HD 6950. MSI went back to the drawing board and redesigned the PCB, armed it with quality components and decided that they would need to slap a nice cooler on there. As such we see the model as tested today, running slightly above reference specification yet with the latest twin Frozr II cooler mounted on top of it.