MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) Review

Overview

 

The Nvidia Kepler based GTX 680s have been around for a while now (about a month), long enough for the consumer (that’s you & me) to see some of the manufacturers beginning to release custom based cards. Here we have the current top of the line MSI card the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition). As you can see from the name (Twin Frozr) this is is not a reference card, although the PCB appears to be 100% reference. This is also the OC Edition, meaning that this card comes pre-overclocked from the factory.

The highlight specifications are a Core Clock of 1058MHz with a Boost Clock 1124MHz (more on this later) and the card is equipped with 2048MB of GDDR5 memory with a Memory Clock of 6008MHz (effective). This represents a Base Clock increase of 52MHz and a Boost Clock increase of 66MHz.

All of the new 680 range support PCI-Express GEN 3.0 and all are also backward compatible.

The Nvidia GTX 680 now also supports a triple monitor setup via a single card, this used to be available via SLI only, or via an AMD card with Eyefinity support.

 

 

The MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) comes in a stylish box with various details about the card printed on both the front and the back, as well as under the lid.

 

 

On opening the lid I got a bit of a shock, as you can see from the photo above. The window that was obviously supposed to showcase the card was sporting a rather bland section of packing foam! Suspecting foul play I quickly opened the box to see what was going on, thinking that this box had been opened before. But after further examination it became apparent that there was no possible way to show off the card due to the way the packing had been arranged. The card itself was also in an anti-static bag, so that would not have looked any better! I assume that as the card is still rather new that MSI have used the packing that they had to hand, strange!

Still the card was well packaged and at least this gave me something to talk about regarding the un-boxing for a change…

 

 

Inside the box there was a Quick User’s Guide, Driver & Utility CD, N680GTX Series Overview, a DVI to D-Sub adapter and x2 Dual Molex to 6-Pin adapters.

 

 

At the time of writing the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) is retailing for approximately £480.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of MSI

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

The first thing that struck me about the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) was how small it was in comparison to my existing MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition. The MSI GTX 680 weighs in at a meager 788 grams (the MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme is 1170 grams!) and has the following dimensions (270mm / 111.15mm / 38.75). Let’s hope that ‘the best things come in small packages’ applies here!

 

 

The MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) is fitted with MSI’s Twin Frozr III heatsink. This heatsink, now in its third incarnation, has already proven itself over the years and seems to be the de facto standard for all of MSI’s overclocked cards. Here the Twin Frozr III heatsink sports a smart looking gunmetal grey exterior with twin black fans.

The heatsink features 3 heat pipes (SuperPipes), and according to MSI, the design along with the x2 80mm PWM Propeller Blade fans generates 20% more airflow than traditional fan designs. All of this allows for far better heat dissipation, allowing the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR cooler to run 22℃ cooler and 10.2 dB quieter than the reference design.

 

 

The card features x2 6-Pin PCI-E power connectors, these are now stacked one above the other and not side by side as normally found. The front connector (see image below) is actually lower than the one at the rear for easy connection.

 

 

The MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) supports up to four concurrent displays (this is a new feature for Kepler, this was only available via SLI setups before) via the following outputs: x2 dual-link DVI , x1 HDMI and x1 DisplayPort 1.2.

The rear of the card also has an exhaust port, but due to the design of the Twin Frozr III heatsink warm air is exhausted both internally and externally, this is unlike the reference design, but this design allows for better cooling.

 

 

Hardware Installation

 

Hardware installation was predictably a straightforward affair once the x2 GTX 580s were removed from my test rig.

 

 

As you can see from the images above the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) is not a lengthy card (270mm) and fits with ease into the Thermaltake Level 10 GT case. This card has the same basic dimensions as the reference design in both Length (270mm) and Width (38.75mm), just the Height is slightly larger at 129mm instead of 111.15mm.

The simple Silver/Black styling also allows the card to be added to any case setup (well probably not all!) without compromising the looks.

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

As new drivers are required for the Nvidia GTX 680 range my rig was treated to a fresh install of Windows Home Premium 64Bit (Service Pack 1) with all associated drivers also installed. The latest version of the Nvidia drivers were used (version 301.10).

The latest version of MSI Afterburner (version 2.2.0) was also installed to allow for further overclocking evaluation to be performed.

 

• Overclocking a GTX 680 (Nvidia Kepler GK104):

Overclocking a GTX 680 (Kepler GPU) is a little more complex than it used to be due to the power limits that are now present on the cards. These limit the overall power draw of the card in an attempt to keep the GPU from exceeding the limits set by the manufacturer. While the card is at stock speed in this case (Core: 1058MHz / Boost: 1124MHz / Mem: 6008MHz ), the card will attempt to remain within its set power band (195 watts) boosting to a Max of 1124MHz should the need arise and falling back should the card draw more power than the limit set.

This means that the first thing you need to be able to do is to allow the card to draw more power. This can be done via MSI Afterburner by adjusting the ‘Power Limit %’ (see image below right). This can be adjusted (at the time of writing) up to 132%. Of course you can set any value between 100 & 132% should you wish to have finer control over your potential overclock. You can even dial it back should you wish, although I’m not sure why you would want to do that! 😉

With this done you can overclock the Boost Clock, yes that’s right not the Core Clock, this is similar to the way you may overclock a Sandy/Ivy Bridge Processor. This allows the card to operate at extremely low clock speeds (in game (Dead Space 2) at 636MHz!) and only ramp up to the maximum should the need arise, thus keeping the power and thermals low. Memory can be overclocked in the same way as before via the slider provided in MSI Afterburner.

 

Overclocking was simple enough using the 2.2.0 version of MSI Afterburner, although I’m quietly confident that the current Nvidia drivers (301.10) don’t support over-volting, as doing so seemed to have no effect via Afterburner, I expect this to change in the future, hopefully unlocking even more performance. Without using over-volting I was able to overclock the (already overclocked) Boost Clock from 1124MHz to 1250MHz and the memory from 3004MHz to 3250MHz. Pretty impressive considering the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) already ships with a fairly impressive factory applied overclock. The settings for this can be seen below.

 

 

The card was benchmarked using the following utilities, also listed below are the games that I played over the 10+ days that the card was in my rig.

Benchmarks:

Games:

• Battlefield 3
• Trine 2
• Dead Space 2 (just finished it, damn fine game that!)
• Tribes Ascend
• RAGE

 

Hardware Performance

 

MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) Stock Settings (Core: 1058MHz / Boost: 1124MHz / Mem: 6008MHz )

Benchmark	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temp	Delta Temp	Result
3DMark 11	21.00	62.00	41.00	9605
Unigine Heaven	21.50	63.00	41.50	1223 (FPS 48.6)
Metro 2033	21.50	61.00	39.50	32.33 FPS
Batman Arkham City	21.50	58.00	36.50	77 FPS

 

MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) Overclocked Settings (Core: 1058MHz / Boost: 1250MHz / Mem: 6500MHz )

Benchmark	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temp	Delta Temp	Result
3DMark 11	21.50	62.00	40.50	10053
Unigine Heaven	21.50	64.00	42.50	1313 (FPS 48.6)
Metro 2033	21.50	62.00	40.50	34.67 FPS
Batman Arkham City	21.50	58.00	36.50	83 FPS

 

Comparing the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) to a MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition (single card & SLI)

* All of the data used here is with the cards at their highest stable overclocks…

Graphics Card	3DMark 11	Unigine Heaven	Metro 2033	Batman Arkham City
MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition)	10053	1313	34.67 FPS	83.00 FPS
MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition	7443	818	33.33 FPS	N/A
MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition SLI	12312	1714	59.00 FPS	105 FPS

 

The synthetic benchmarks show that the new GTX 680 holds a 36% lead over the GTX 580 in the 3DMark 11 Performance test and a 50%+ lead in the Unigine Heaven test. The real world tests show less of an improvement, in the Metro 2033 test (I suspect that the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) is being held back due to its lower 2048MB memory). I apologise for not having a figure for the Batman GTX 580 single card test, but I’m not going to make one up either…

The best performance figure here to take note of is the Ungine Heaven result as this is a pure GPU based benchmark, this gives you a real indication of the performance on offer from the new MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition).

What’s even more impressive than the graphics performance is the card’s Thermal/Acoustic & Power performance. This card is smaller than the outgoing GTX 580, it runs significantly cooler, all of the other GTX 580s tested ran at 80+ degrees, this card maxed out at 65! The card is barely audible even when running a hefty overclock and while using this card in my test rig the maximum power draw at the wall was only 326 watts!

To put that into some kind of perspective; my x2 GTX580s pulled 800 watts with a 3DMark 11 score 12312, the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) pulled 326 watts but still managed a 3DMark 11 score of 10053, considering its significantly smaller size and lower heat/noise output, I think that’s pretty damn impressive…

While playing the games listed above I saw no artifacts and encountered no Driver issues, in fact the card performed flawlessly throughout the 10+ day testing period.

 

Final Thoughts

 

The MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) is the first new Nvidia Kepler based card that we have seen here at pcGameware, and it’s put in a rather impressive showing. This card is not based on the reference design and comes with the now common MSI Twin Frozr heatsink, this is a smart affair as it doesn’t rely on massive fans or heatsinks to do its job, a job it does well. This also allows the card to stay close to the small size of the reference design, you won’t be hunting for an extra large PC case just to house one of these!

It is the power held within this design (both Nvidia’s & MSI’s) that makes this card really something special; achieving in excess of 10000 3DMarks while only pulling 326 watts at the wall, I think is really rather impressive, in fact I was almost shocked (pun not intended!) and thought that my power meter was playing up! It also did all of this while remaining relatively silent (my case fans all on low!) and at less than 65 degrees, even when overclocked beyond the factory overclock.

It is this low power consumption coupled with low heat and noise output that, along with its performance, allows the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) to sit right near the top of the Graphics Card Mountain. The only real negative here is the price, the new GTX 680s aren’t cheap (£425+) and this OC Edition from MSI is retailing for approximately £480, that’s a hefty premium, but if you want one of the best GTX 680s out there, then the MSI GTX 680 TWIN FROZR (OC Edition) is maybe just what you’re looking for…

 

Verdict