MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition Review - PAGE 1

MSI's Twin Frozr series of graphics cards is optimized to deliver the best balance between noise output and thermal performance. In the last few years two iterations of the Twin Frozr were utilized on both AMD and Nvidia based graphics cards, and today Neoseeker examines the third installment of the design. The Twin Frozr III series includes features such as a propeller blade technology that provides 20% more airflow, a 6+2 PWM design, triple over-voltage function, "Military Class II" components and MSI's exclusive on-board P/S (performance/silence) switch function. All of these feature aim to improve the performance, reliability, acoustic and overclocking potential of the graphics card.

The graphics card reviewed today not only uses all the aforementioned features, but includes a substantial factory applied overclock as well. The R6950 Twin Frozr III utilizes an 850MHz overclocked Cayman Pro graphics process featuring 1460 streaming processors, 88 texture units and a computer power of roughly 2 TFLOPs. Also, the R6950 model uses a frame buffer of 1GB as opposed to the 2GB available on reference models. The reduced memory effectively allows manufacturers to reduce the price of the board by nearly $100, and paired with such a strong graphics processor, any reduction in performance would only be noticeable when running games at resolutions above 1920x1200, or when utilizing the Eyefinity feature.

At time of writing, the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE has an MSRP of $249, which is right in line with other custom designed Cayman Pro graphics cards. The question though is whether or not MSI's Twin Frozr III design brings anything new to the table, and how does it compare to other models using the 1GB frame buffer. Neoseeker intends to answer these questions in an in-depth look at the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition graphics card.