MSI Radeon R9-280X TwinFrozr Gaming OC review - Introduction

MSI Radeon R9-280X TwinFrozr Gaming OC edition

In this review we take a peek at the MSI Radeon R9-280X TwinFrozr Gaming OC review. The smexy dark custom PCB has been armed with quality components, a dual-BIOS and their dual fan based TwiNFrozr series edition coolers. MSI factory overclocked the product and will try to get you as much value for money as they can. Follow us into this review where we'll look at temperatures, noise, performance, Frame latency and we'll even give Ultra High Definition gaming a go with the hottest game titles on the globe.

Now before we begin with the new graphics cards the first thing that you guys will need to get used to is the new naming schema. AMD ended with the Radeon HD 7000 and 8000 series graphics card in 2013. Logic dictates that AMD would have continued with a series 9000. But hey now, we already have had the Radeon 9000 series many years ago (2003), oh and who doesn't remember the Radeon 9800 Pro right? As such it was time to bring in a new naming schema, a bit more in line with AMD's APUs. R9 will be high-end and R7 will be mainstream and inevitably R5 being entry level. After that you'll notice products being tagged as 250, 260X, 270X, 280X and the coolest two of them all the Radeon R9 290 and R290X, (which have yet to be released). Though almost all of these are all new model graphics cards, most of them are respin products based of the Radeon HD 7000 series with a number of improvements. The respin products will get a new PCB, cooling, clock frequencies and much like NVIDIA boost, power, voltage, fan and load limiters. In the ling run there are three products in the lineup that come with a new GPU. For example The R7 260X and then of course R9 290 / 290X will be Hawaii GPU based. The cards with new silicon come with a truckload of new features like integrated DSPs offering TrueAudio technology. The rest (270X/280X) will keep the older specs. I agree that is a little confusing, but we'll explain it all over the next pages.

For out fourth R280 review we take a look at the offering from MSI with their  MSI Radeon R9-280X TwinFrozr Gaming OC edition, they are releasing several customized R9-280X models but today specifically we test that little gimp named TwinFrozr Gaming OC edition. The OC SKU comes factory overclocked for you guys, the GPU is allowed to clock at 1050 (Boost) MHz while the memory will run at 1500MHz (6.0 Gbps data rate). This card comes with one DVI output as well as one HDMI and two mini-DisplayPort connectors.