Noise is generally the bain of most consumers lives and in the hope of finding the quietest operation, we feel it’s necessary to show you the audio level of components. We use the same components throughout this test and use a sound level meter to record the audio level of the system with a passive graphics card installed. Once we have the level recorded with the passive card, we continue to change the graphics card for the one that we are testing. Due to us having the audio level recorded before installation, it gives us a guide to work with and shows that anything over our initial level is an audio gain.
With this card utilising the Twin Frozr IV cooler, this is where things start to get interesting. Though the numbers for a first glance look high, they are still extremely low compared to other high end cards, like the HD 7970 that we also tested.
We also see the noise levels only rise marginally from idle to load, whereas other cards see increases by well over 20 dBA.
Page 11: “bain?”
Bain, n. [F. bain, fr. L. balneum. Cf. Bagnio.] A bath; a bagnio. [Obs.] –Holland.
You need to spell it correctly for it to have the desired meaning:
bane
noun
1. a person or thing that ruins or spoils: Gambling was the bane of his existence.
2. a deadly poison (often used in combination, as in the names of poisonous plants): wolfsbane; henbane.
3. death; destruction; ruin.
4. Obsolete . that which causes death or destroys life: entrapped and drowned beneath the watery bane.
Who writes these articles?
The Author is clearly listed at the top, Andy Ruffell
How you manage a review on a OC specific card, without a mention of OC, and still stay credible is perplexing. This is a card that people will buy for mainly OC, and you fail to bench it!? LoL, what?
We were working on an overclocking specific article but afterburner doesn’t fully support this particular card. Msi have even admitted that 2.2.2 isn’t good enough and no sign of a new beta yet.
Due to this the overclock we got was pretty shocking at only 1180mhz when we know this card can do so much more.
We are still in talks with msi in regards to this.
Fair enough. I fault MSi for advertising “unlocked voltage” on the product, yet not delivering. Reminds me of the EVGA GTX 580 Classified mishandling.
Yeah, afterburner etc… Shows 1.175 yet the multimeter shows 1.22 when connected to the v check points, though no difference was seen when overclocking and increasing the voltage as it simply didn’t increase.
It should also be appropriate to mention that if you are using these cards in SLI, you have to keep at least 1 card slot spacing between cards. This is for 2 reasons. 1) the fans do protrude above the shroud, and easily come into contact with the backplane of the SLI card unless you are very careful and use something to wedge between the cards to maintain clearance for the fans. Otherwise, the fans can, and will, jam, and will not spin. You will not notice this unless you look for it, or until the card overheats and shuts down. and 2) The card evidently needs “breathing room” for the cooler to work as designed because if you do install 2 or 3 cards in SLI without at least a slot spacing between them, they overheat and shut down within 30 seconds of running a stress test or benchmark. Therefore, you are essentially limited to 2 cards if you want to do an SLI. If you want 3-Way or 4-Way SLI, you need to look at custom cooling solutions.