MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III 3072 MB

[W1zzard]

MSI's new HD 7950 Twin Frozr III is a fully customized implementation of AMD's latest 28 nm card. For cooling the card uses the same large dual-fan TwinFrozr III heatsink that we have seen on many other MSI products before. The card also features an overclock out of the box for a bit of extra performance.

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[radrok]

I've always like the Twin Frozr cooler, this beauty is very very cool.

One question, W1zzard, are you going to review an ASUS 7970 or 7950 DCII?

 

[W1zzard]

One question, W1zzard, are you going to review an ASUS 7970 or 7950 DCII?

asus 7970 dc ii was supposed to be here this week. maybe some extra delay at asus

 

[dj-electric]

Dawwww.... :\

I like the OC abilities of this HD7950. Its phenomenal
When you overclocked, did you set PowerTune to +20%?

 

[SlayerJC]

63º when overclock over 1ghz. Really awesome.

 

[SteelSix]

Another win for MSI's PWM and Twin Frozr III implementations.

I'm holding tight, but if I go 7950's, it'll likely be this. Asus, take note of this killer dual slot design..

 

[alexsubri]

This card just won me! The ASUS Directcu II should take notes on this!

 

[RejZoR]

TwinFrozr III series are good if run stock. But i was a bit disappointed when i noticed my HD6950 OC Power Edition OC won't overclock at all. Whatever i did, even tiny overclock it would result in GPU recovery or system lockup. Not instantly but always during the gaming. I hope the HD7000 series are going to be more OC friendly...

 

[radrok]

TwinFrozr III series are good if run stock. But i was a bit disappointed when i noticed my HD6950 OC Power Edition OC won't overclock at all. Whatever i did, even tiny overclock it would result in GPU recovery or system lockup. Not instantly but always during the gaming. I hope the HD7000 series are going to be more OC friendly...

That's not TwinFrozr's fault and not MSI fault at all. You rolled a bad dice on the silicon lottery and got a badly binned chip. I bet that card atleast reaches 970core with 1.25v

 

[General Lee]

I've had bad luck with a TFIII 6950, didn't unlock and OC was mediocre at best. Ultimately it is lottery, I doubt they have any sort of binning to select faster GPUs, and given AMD's VID binning and OCP, high leakage chip still might not OC well with software voltage tweak. This chip looked more like a lower leakage chip, didn't go far on stock but could take more voltage no problem. A higher leakage chip would've probably crashed after 1,2V like a lot of the 1,05V 7970's do. Maybe it's OCP kicking in?

Maybe W1zzard could tell us the ASIC quality of the chip?

 

[buggalugs]

Yap, the MSI cooler is one of the best on the market and its only 2 slot.

Still waiting for Sapphire Atomic/VapourX/Toxic, they should be pretty good too.

BTW, I have the MSI lightning 6970 and it can do 1000Mhz on the core which is very high for a 6970. It performs better than the Asus Direct CUII but the Asus is a good card too.

 

[SonDa5]

Looks like all MSI did was add the TFiii cooler to it.

$30 more for the cooler looks like a good value if one is just going to air cool.


I hope MSI gets out a PE/OC TwinFrzr version with pumped up military class components and improved power phases.

 

[RejZoR]

Only thing i hate about TwinFrozr III is the fact it's VERY hard to clean. Yesterday i had some bizarre USB issues so i took my box apart and noticed it would be a good idea to clean the dust a bit. It turned out it's really hard to clean it. Blowing at it does very little and using the pointy attachment for vacuum cleaner did very little as well. I had to unscrew both fans so i could get closer with the pointy attachment. There were still some other parts where i couldn't clean it at all. Maybe a high pressure compressor would do it but not everyone have it at home...

 

[DeoDomuique]

Only thing i hate about TwinFrozr III is the fact it's VERY hard to clean.

Extremely important for me... My next card would be the 7950 or 660/670GTX depends... I'd really like to see a manufacturer who will innovate and will let us easily extract and clean the mechanism... It's such a pain... For cleaning Ι use a whole box of cotton buds for ears and much time.

By the way, the usual question here is... This card which has extremely good cooling system or a reference 7970, since the difference is small... I like a solid reference design and seemingly at least, the new ATIs have a good one. 80% I'd prefer an untouched 7970 and I wouldn't apply any overclock at all.

 

[buggalugs]

Vacuum cleaners arent recommended for electronics, the static electricity on the nozzle of a vacuum is horrendous.

I use a 1" paintbrush to clean heatsinks, or you can get a can of compressed air if its really bad.

 

[buggalugs]

From the review

"MSI's cooler works wonder, when compared to the AMD reference design. While it's not as quiet as other HD 7950 designs (PowerColor PCS+), it is still a huge improvement over the standard cooler."

Wizzard , how many non -reference have you tested? Looks like you only tested the powercolor and MSI so far.

You give the impression the twin frosr 3 is noisy when its much quiter than the Asus Direct CUII. Even under load I cant hear my MSI fan at all.

 

[yangwangbrock]

From the review

"MSI's cooler works wonder, when compared to the AMD reference design. While it's not as quiet as other HD 7950 designs (PowerColor PCS+), it is still a huge improvement over the standard cooler."

Wizzard , how many non -reference have you tested? Looks like you only tested the powercolor and MSI so far.

You give the impression the twin frosr 3 is noisy when its much quiter than the Asus Direct CUII. Even under load I cant hear my MSI fan at all.

I can testify to MSI twin frozr iii being quieter than Asus DCII. Had asus before but exchanged it to MSI. at 50% the fan on Asus starts to get quite loud. Not so much so for MSI.

 

[m1dg3t]

Nice review, as usual Look's like a good product, never owned anything MSI but this look's interesting

 

[SonDa5]

When is this going to be available?

 

[SonDa5]

Looks like all MSI did was add the TFiii cooler to it.

$30 more for the cooler looks like a good value if one is just going to air cool.


I hope MSI gets out a PE/OC TwinFrzr version with pumped up military class components and improved power phases.

After further research I also spotted that the TPU MSI TFIII HD 7950 also sports some upgraded pink capacitors.


Also I just found a photo of an even better looking MSI TFIII HD7950 at EK Cooling.

Take a look at this.

That has improved pink capacitors all the way around. Looking good.

 

[SonDa5]

I found it for sale on the German Amazon site. Tried to order it but unable to ship to USA.

http://www.amazon.de/MSI-V276-013R-Radeon-Grafikkarte-Speicher/dp/B00778DUJ6/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_cart_1

 

[vaub0039]

No idea if someone is interested in this but... MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC Radeon HD 7950 3GB 38....

I guess I'll get one, the card is looking so good!

 

[m1dg3t]

This card @ $330 after rebate is a good choice?

W1zz do you think the cards out now are newer chips/better binned? Would be nice to have similar result as this but with lil' less volts

 

[pantherx12]

Vacuum cleaners arent recommended for electronics, the static electricity on the nozzle of a vacuum is horrendous.

I use a 1" paintbrush to clean heatsinks, or you can get a can of compressed air if its really bad.

+ one to using a paint brush, I clean everything with them and it pretty much gets things spotless.

If there's anything left I rinse the heatsink with alcohol