Hardware MSI GeForce GTX 760 Twin Frozr OC 2GB Review

MSI pairs the GTX 760 with its new Twin Frozr cooler, with an eye to some awesome overclocks.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/07/04/msi-geforce-gtx-760-twin-frozr-oc-2gb-revie/1

 

Though the delta is undoubtedly the way to go for reviews, would you be able to tell us what temps the GPU core reached under load?

 

Any news on when 4GB versions of the 760 will start to arrive?

 

No news, and if precedent's anything to go by, they'll make little to no difference anyway. 770 2GB is lots faster with the same 2GB, 780 only has 3GB and goes faster than 6GB Titan with a bit of OC.

64°C stock, 68°C when OC, in 24°C ambient under extended load. Fan rpm in the screenshot of 1142.

 

Its not really about speed in todays games, but rather tomorrows, with the new consoles increase in memory the chances are texture sizes are going to be increased and memory is going to be a lot more important. If I was to replace my card today I'd want 4gig to have a bit of future proofing personally.

 

Was really looking forward to getting either this one or the Asus version as they seem to perform quite well! Sadly though, EK indicated they will not be making water blocks for it...

(And, yes, I know watercooling is far from a necessity on this card, but when doing a water cooled system, I would like to do the entire system, not just the CPU )

 

It wasn't really about it being any faster, just thought a 4GB one of these would make an excellent card to last me 3yrs or so, with the PS4 and 8GB of GDDR5, ports to the PC will need all the Vram they can get..

 

Very nice card. It's always nice to see a premium cooling solution make it to a mid ranged card that's affordable

 

I read a little bit somewhere that with a 256bit memory interface the extra memory of a 4GB card doesn't get used any way and to use more than the standard 2GB you really need a memory interface of 512bit so it still wouldn't make a difference even in tomorrows games. Not sure how true this all is as I wasn't really paying attention as I was looking for some other info at the time.

 

Don't think we will see the low end cards with 4gb of ram in them, even the 670/680s with 4gb in we're poor sellers and very hard to find due to that. Mostly because the extra ram was only needed under SLI at multi monitor resolutions, and if your paying for multi monitor buying 2 top end cards is hardly the main cost of your rig.

 

Nothing new here.
Seems my GTX580 going to be replaced by an AMD 8000 series when they come out in Autumn.

 

It's getting quite hard to keep up with the 3rd party coolers. Nearly all the manufacturers offer their own take on a custom cooler set-up with some companies offering custom PCBs with upgraded components such as this MSI board and ASUS's options too. As good as this individual model seems to have been, I am a little dubious of MSI cards these days as many, many people have had issues with the older Twin Frozr II and the earlier models of the Twin Frozr III. I think I would still punt for the ASUS model with their Direct CU II cooler or possibly their 'mini' version of the GTX760 which is apparently coming.

 

In my experience of the "old" Twin Frozr III (slapped on a 560Ti 448) it was one of the loudest cards I've ever had the misfortune of owning.

Admittedly that card probably kicked out another 50w of thermals compared to the 760 but even so I couldn't live with it long term.

Sounds like they've tweaked it a bit and married it beautifully to this card though.

 

That is exactly the card my friend had and it ran at full speed all the time and had temps just below the thermal threshold even when not playing games, and as you say, it was loud as hell.

 

One thing I find odd/annoying about these reviews is the OC performance charts; it's hardly fair to compare an overclocked card against non-overclocked ones as it gives a false sense of performance. Compare how well all the tested cards do ( or just a selection as is the case now ) when overclocked and it be much more representative of it's overclocked performance....

 

2 of these vs a single 780 would be good to see

 

both more than 20 per cent increases that saw the card dominate the £20 dearer GTX 670 2GB


In which graph?

 

Um, the ones on the 'Overclocking' pages...

 

That's the problem that I just noted- the 760 only beats the 670 when the 760 is overclocked; that is a totally unfair comparison and poor testing.

Compare an overclocked 670 against the overclocked 760 and I imagine the 670 will still beat the it. /logic

 

How is it an unfair comparison? In the games benchmarks they test a stock 670 as well as other stock cards along side this MSI overclocked but off the shelf 760 so you know exactly where this particular card stacks up against the stock cards of other models. In the separate 'Overclocking' section they test this particular card and see how far the user can further overclock and then test to see where the user overclocked card stands up against the GTX760's closest rival to show the sort of performance you can get. You can't expect BT to test every overclocked model from every manufacturer.