MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming OC review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase: GeForce GTX 970

Let's start with our photo-shoot. Two pages worth of photos then and all of them from our own photo-shoot.

So as you can see, this is the MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming edition. Bear in mind that we test the OC model specifically, which comes with a faster standard clock frequency. MSI has built a custom board that differs from the reference design. You will spot a custom PCB with 6 phases and one 6 and one 8 pin power header for a little more overclocking headroom. 

The card is like 27cm in length with the cooler included. This is the OC edition of the Gaming series, meaning it has higher factory clocks, quite impressive as well. The GPU core base clock is ticking over at a 1140 MHz core GPU clock frequency with a 1279 MHz Boost frequency. This card has less shader processors than a 980 though. The memory has been kept reference at 7.0 GHz (effective data-rate) on its 256-bit wide memory bus of 4 GB GDDR5 memory.

Overall MSI is keeping their Gaming theme in all black and red with the dragon logo. Especially with the new design cooler it is a very nice looking product. On the next photo you'll notice however that it will lack a back-plate, something that is more common and popular these days.

The card will have a maximum power design of 145 Watts, but due to the higher clocks and extensive tweaking please allow for 15, maybe 20 extra Watts, these boards have been designed with overclocking in mind. It has six power phases being fed from one 6 and one 8-pin power header. In combo with component selection it should be plenty for a nice tweak (or two). 
 

Opposed to others, the card will get only four display connectors, MSI made that compromise so that there is more space to vent hot air outside of the chassis. It's a big trade-off though as many would have preferred the many DP connectors. You'll spot one full size Display Port connector, one full size HDMI 2.0 connector and two DVI connectors. HDMI is 2.0 compatible meaning that compatible monitors and tellys can do UHD at 60 Hz, DP is 1.2 but has support for eDP 1.4.