NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Review Feat. MSI Twin Frozr Gaming Edition

Updated: June 25, 2013

Layout And Design

Lets first take a look at NVIDIA’s reference model that features their black shroud and single blower style fan apparatus to cool the GPU and its surrounding components and has two 6-pin power connections.

The reference card is what it is and with this launch and I do not see too many companies just slapping a sticker on it and calling it a day.

I cannot say that no companies will as I am sure we will see a few hit the market, but they will also be at the lowest price point and only geared for very moderate beyond factory spec overclocking.

You can see the back of the card features a black PCB and only actually takes up about 75% of the actual length of the card.

The MSI Twin Frozr Gaming Edition features an open-air design that dissipates and then blows the heat away from the GPU into the system and relies upon your systems airflow to get rid of the hot air away from the computer itself.

The card has a color scheme of a Ferrari, but with a Dragon for the emblem design as seen in the center of the card. There are 2-fans on the top of the card hence the nomenclature Twin Frozr and underneath the fans we can see the aluminum heat fins that work in conjunction with the copper Heatpipes to take the heat away from the GPU. MSI is now using a direct to copper connection to help improve the efficiency of the cooling system.

On the bottom side of the MSI Twin Frozr Gaming Edition you can see the heatpipes and the aluminum cooling fins that make up the cooling solution of the card, which is entirely different than the design used on the reference designed card from NVIDIA in every way.

The PCB of the MSI card is also different and sports a root beer brown color in respect to NVIDIA’s solid black design.

Another difference between the two cards is the power requirements needed to power them, as the NVIDIA reference model has dual 6-pin power connectors, while the MSI Twin Frozr has an 8-pin and 6-pin connection. The MSI card is 100% aimed at the overclocking crowd and is right out of the box overclocked and cooled to remain stable even when pushed beyond standard specs.

MSI has gone beyond reference design specifications to bring a better GTX 760 to the table and the cooling and high-end Military Class 4 components set it apart from the reference design by a wide margin. Both cards have the same PCIe 3.0 interface as that is something that remains the same throughout all of the cards and both share the same rear output connectivity. Almost every card I have seen in the last few launches from NVIDIA have featured the same output layout of 2 DVI, a standard DisplayPort and a standard HDMI connection. They’re are some benefits however that I must in all fairness discuss, and that is using aftermarket liquid cooling solutions. If you plan on using a liquid cooled system most of them are built around the reference designed card as that usually all the available specs that those companies have at launch day and making a kit for every company usually does not happen.