MSI certainly sknows how to make a lump of plastic metal and silicon look dazzling. Okay, so it’s just a graphics card, but to us, they're impressive-looking objects.
The MSI GTX970 4G certainly stands out from the crowd, with two elaborately designed, 100mm downdraft fans positioned atop a huge nickel-plated copper heatsink, with four heatpipes winding through the aluminium fins.
Beyond the design, we have 4GB of GDDR5 memory, a default core clock speed of 1114MHz, memory clock speed of 7GHz and HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI-I and DVI-D outputs. The Nvidia Maxwell architecture delivers 16 streaming multiprocessors, 2,048 CUDA cores and drinks up a healthy 145W of power. This alone should be enough to pique the interests of the gaming fraternity. However, through the use of the MSI Gaming App, you’re able to overclock this card to a mouth-watering 1140MHz or underclock it to a more sedate, but silent, 1051MHz core speed. You could probably go even higher should you so wish, as MSI has included overclocking through the Gaming App in the warranty. Experimentation is certainly on the cards, then.
The twin Frozr V fans work independently of each other and are remarkably quiet in their operation – even when the Overclock mode button was clicked in the Gaming App. The temperature too never ventured much beyond the 65ºC mark, and the design of the card makes for a better airflow through and around the fans and components.
To add to that, the GTX970 is slightly slimmer than the average dual-slot card. This enforces better airflow and helps keeps the card cooler when set up in an SLI mode. When seated on the motherboard, it looks quite sleek, and there’s also an LEDlit dragon and MSI logo on the top corner of the fan mounts.
Not only does this card look the business, but it also performs magnificently, and the 3DMark 11 score of 15,610 is testament to that. Furthermore, Battlefield 4 at 1920 x 1080 in Ultra settings managed an average framerate of 76. Skyrim at 1080, 8x AA and with the Ultra settings and high resolution texture pack installed averaged out at 150fps. And Watch Dogs at 1080 with everything at the maximum graphical level scored an average of 71fps.
Suffice to say, this is a graphics card that can play anything you want to throw at it in the highest resolutions without even breaking into the digital equivalent of a sweat. So imagine having three of these teamed up in an SLI setup.
MSI has pulled out all the stops with the GTX970 Gaming 4G. Not only is it a hugely impressive card, but it’s also asking to be tweaked with, and doing so is exceptionally easy through the MSI management software. And for around £270, we think it’s also reasonably priced considering the massive impact it will have on your system.
This is a solid weapon of choice for any gamer, which offers superb performance, features and stability, as well as overclocking potential. Certainly one to consider when upgrade time approaches.