A Closer Look

MSI's Twin Frozr II cooler uses five heatpipes to transport heat away quickly from the GPU core to the fins where it gets dissipated.


Secondary components like voltage regulation circuitry and memory chips are cooled by this metal heatspreader.


The card has two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors which are specified up to 225 W power delivery.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-T2C. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


MSI has deviated from the reference design voltage controller and is using a CHiL 8214 instead - like on the HD 6800 reference designs. The chip supports voltage control via I2C, which makes it an excellent choice for overclockers who want to play with voltages.


AMD's new Cayman graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. It uses approximately 2.64 billion transistors on a die area of 389 mm².