A Closer Look

MSI's cooler uses two large fans and five heatpipes to keep their card cool.


The front side of the card (with the GPU) is covered by a secondary metal heatsink that cools the memory chip and voltage regulation circuitry.


The card requires two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is good for up to 225 W of power draw.


MSI uses use a Richtek RT8802A voltage controller on their card, just like the reference design. This is a fairly simple controller which does not offer any monitoring features or software voltage control. Voltages are controlled via VID pins that are directly connected to the GPU.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's new GK104 graphics processor introduces the company's brand-new Kepler architecture. It is NVIDIA's first chip to be produced on a 28 nanometer process, at TSMC Taiwan. The transistor count is 3.54 billion.