Below are images and first look at MSI’s upcoming GeForce GTX 970 graphics card featuring the company’s new non-reference cooler design – the MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G Twin Frozr V. The card’s new cooler design looks great and perfectly matches their new Gaming motherboard lineup, specially the X99 Gaming motherboards. Aside from the custom cooler design, MSI will also be releasing a not-so-reference and not-so-attractive looking cooler design. But the other variant (photos below) are expected to be cheaper compared to the GTX 970 with Twin Frozr V cooler. This would be a good option for those are planning to water cool their GPUs anyway. Check them out below.
UPDATE: MSI latest GeForce GTX 900 series graphics card are now official and available. See MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G and GTX 970 Gaming 4G
MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G Twin Frozr V
MSI previously revealed their new custom cooler, the Twin Frozr V, via one of their Facebook pages. The MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G features a custom-design PCB and draws power from 6+8-pin power connector instead of a two 6-pin power from the reference design. The TwinFrozr V features two huge 100mm fans and a relatively bigger metal shroud and aluminum fins as well.
There’s a metal plate covering and cooling the memory chips and other components near the power connector. But the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G doesn’t have a backplate support, unlike the reference design. The TwinFrozr V is said to feature a glowing logo and you can actually control the individual fan’s speed via a unique 6-pin fan header.
The MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G Twin Frozr V features 6+2 phase VRM, 1664 CUDA Cores, factory overclock speeds of 1140MHz base / 1279MHz boost, and 4GB GDDR5 memory running on a 256-bit memory interface. I’m not sure if the memory is overclocked as well out of the box. The card’s TDP or Thermal Design Power is 148W only, significantly lower compared to the previous generation.
Unfortunately this card comes with only two DVI ports, an HDMI port and a DisplayPort. NVIDIA’s reference GeForce GTX 970 comes with 1x DVI port, 1x HDMI port and 3x DisplayPort.
The GeForce GTX 970 is reported to be priced around $249 to $299. If this information is accurate, expect that the MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G TwinFrozr V will have a premium price; most probably $50 more than the reference price.
Meanwhile, MSI’s reference GeForce GTX 970 features a not so attractive looking reference cooler design, but features 5 display ports. See it below.
MSI GeForce GTX 970 Reference
Here’s a first look on the MSI GeForce GTX 970, featuring a reference-like cooler. The MSI GTX 980 looks pretty much the same with this one. The MSI GTX 970 might not feature a cool-looking cooler, and I bet it comes with stock clock speeds as well, but it does feature 5 display ports. It has 1x DVI ports, 1x HDMI 2.0 ports, and 3x DisplayPorts.
The reference MSI GTX 970 is expected to be priced near or similar with NVIDIA’s GTX 970 retail price. This would be a good option for those who are into water cooling, and plans to water cool their graphics card(s) as well.
I’ll post more updates as soon as more news comes out. The GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 are expected to be unveiled tomorrow, September 19, on NVIDIA’s Gaming event.
Source: VideoCardz.com
