MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G Video Card Review @ [H]

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MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G Video Card Review - Watch the MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G video card make waves and knock out GeForce GTX 780 and AMD Radeon R9 290, making them obsolete and maybe even some other video cards as well. This $349 video card puts up a fight and swings a win at this price. The overclock alone should make anyone wet their pants, you don't want to miss this.
 
Thanks for the great article. I was thinking about upgrading to two of these between now and Christmas, and this just sealed the deal. Excellent price/performance ratio.
 
Yeah Thank you for this review! so glad I ordered this card. just waiting on delivery.. UPS hurry up!
 
Sweet....good read and good news. I've been looking into getting into 1440p gaming and this looks like a great way to do so.
 
Thanks for the excellent review, seems to corroborate everyone's reports that the MSI card overclocks really well.

Any chance you guys would be able to do a review on Gigabyte's GTX 970 G1 Gaming? From all the reviews I've seen the Gigabyte card has better thermals, and OC potential seems to be on par with the MSI card. A head-to-head comparison would really make it that much easier for me to decide. :)
 
Goldentiger owns a pair of these and found something interesting. On stock voltage and leaving the vram at stock (7000mhz) he can overclock his cards to and slightly above 1600mhz boost and it is stable for gaming and benching without throttling down since he is saving on some of the power limit by leaving the vram alone.

Reading his results I added my own 2c in saying that likely 7000mhz vram speed paired with nvidia's new compression and better use of vram on the Maxwell architecture should be enough for lower resolution gaming. So overclocking ram may not even be necessary and may hold you back for max possible performance below 2560x1440, 1920x1200, and 1080P. Vram speed seems to really be a factor when high res gaming is concerned and the 1000mhz overclock on vram may best be used there (triple 1080P, triple 25x14, 4k)

I guess I would suggest if running a lower resolution setup to give this a try and benchmark it to see what performs best for you.
 
Great review and makes me happy & frustrated that I have to wait longer to get my card in. Some retailers are useless....

Lord_Exodia said:
yoink!
Click to expand...

Thanks I'll be trying this out @ 1080p/120hz & I'm sure you're correct.

Oh boy. I'll be looking for a custom bios to raise that power limit. Anyone know of one in development?
 
Excellent review. GTX 970 obsoletes AMD's R9 290X, R9 290 and R9 280X. AMD's pricing stack needs to be compressed and shifted down. But the most significant part is GTX 970 makes the GTX 980 look hopelessly overpriced. :D In fact the MSI GTX 970 is able to run around 5% behind the GTX 980 at the same settings in 4 out of 5 games for 60% of the GTX 980 price. The smart money is on GTX 970. AMD's pricing stack should be

R9 290X - 329
R9 290 - 279
R9 285X - 229
R9 285 - 179

The GTX 960 to be launched in mid- Oct is going to wreak further havoc on AMD. The next 2 quarters for AMD till the R9 300 series launches is very grim.
 
Wow 2 of those on a 1440p@120 is perfect! great review, and overclock.

Bring on the modded bios's for higher power limit!
 
1.5GHz without touching the voltage. I agree, can't wait until modders are able to eliminate the power cap and see what they can do. Is it possible that we might see 2GHz? Crazy :cool:.
 
More power consumption than a 780 (250w card)? Wow. Thanks for the review. I'll be staying away from this one (I don't plan to OC).
 
Kogan said:
More power consumption than a 780 (250w card)? Wow. Thanks for the review. I'll be staying away from this one (I don't plan to OC).
Click to expand...

Damn then you would be missing out on arguably the best GTX 970 out there for a negligable 20 watts. It's your perogative, but are you that hard up for like $19/yr of extra electric bill.
 
Excellent review as usual. This just makes me even more excited to get back from vacation to play with the two ASUS 970s that I have coming in while I'm gone....damn Amazon for taking so long to restock!
 
Could you tell us how were the VRM tempratures whilst gaming on this card with the 8 GHz overclock? Also which memory does the card come with? I am hoping Samsung.

Great review.
 
bpizzle1 said:
Excellent review as usual. This just makes me even more excited to get back from vacation to play with the two ASUS 970s that I have coming in while I'm gone....damn Amazon for taking so long to restock!
Click to expand...

You need to take advantage of their new Optimus Prime shipping. The moment you click the last thing to finalize the order, a 18 wheeler pulls up, transforms to a robot and drops it off at your porch. Only bad thing is when he rings the doorbell it destoys the bell.

Optimus Prime Shipping > Prime shipping :D
 
This makes me really consider switching to Nvidia after years of AMD cards. How is NVsurround? I love my eyefinity.
 
strikerP4 said:
This makes me really consider switching to Nvidia after years of AMD cards. How is NVsurround? I love my eyefinity.
Click to expand...

Great performance, Games can span 3 monitors only but 5 monitors at once is supported. I believe the 4th and 5th monitor can be used for desktop actions and launching internet browser to google etc...
 
strikerP4 said:
This makes me really consider switching to Nvidia after years of AMD cards. How is NVsurround? I love my eyefinity.
Click to expand...

Great performance, Games can span 3 monitors only but 5 monitors at once is supported. I believe the 4th and 5th monitor can be used for desktop actions and launching internet browser to google etc...

Also quick thing I wanted to note is that according to their latest WHQL release notes, it says the 5th monitor thing is new, so since I never tried it I don't know if that's working for sure. I wanted to add that before someone who never read the release notes doesn't quickly chime in to say "No 4 is the max"
 
So how much faster is it compared to a regular 970?

I know the stock 970 numbers are in the other article but I'M LAZY!!!! :D:D
 
Stoly said:
So how much faster is it compared to a regular 970?

I know the stock 970 numbers are in the other article but I'M LAZY!!!! :D:D
Click to expand...

970 = Prime Shipping
MSI 970 Gaming = Optimus Prime Shipping

On a serious note though, it's out of the box faster and seems to overclock much better. Worth the extra $20 IMHO
 
On my personal rig, I've noticed the clocks are all over the place, depending on the game being played.
Does GPU Z show in full screen mode or otherwise how are you (and others) affirming max sustained core clock speeds?

As you've well pointed out, stated boost clock and actual boost clock are two separate things, and some games don't even seem to move the boost clock to max settings.... for the little time I had my eVGA 970 SC, I noticed each game produced a different boost clock.....
 
Last edited:
from conclusion
""The reason we say this is that we achieved 1592MHz without even upping the voltage before the power limiter hit the TDP and throttled the clock speed. If we can hit 1592MHz without changing the voltage, then with voltage clock speeds in excess of 1600MHz should be possible""

Shouldn't that be 1507 , not 1592 ,which is higher than your max with voltage added (1542) .
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Damn then you would be missing out on arguably the best GTX 970 out there for a negligable 20 watts. It's your perogative, but are you that hard up for like $19/yr of extra electric bill.
Click to expand...

GTX 780 (250w TDP): 329w total - 90w system = 239w used by video card
MSI 970 stock (145w TDP): 369w -90w system = 279w used by video card

The problem to me is that the MSI 970 uses 279w. That's incredibly high compared to the 145w TDP and I'd say invalidates their 500w PSU recommendation.

To me, the best GTX 970 out there is the one that performs as advertised, is incredibly quiet, uses a blower design, and uses less than 150w. Before I buy, I'll wait for a round-up comparison. I'm not in any way saying this card isn't good for GPU overclockers.
 
Kogan said:
GTX 780 (250w TDP): 329w total - 90w system = 239w used by video card
MSI 970 stock (145w TDP): 369w -90w system = 279w used by video card

The problem to me is that the MSI 970 uses 279w. That's incredibly high compared to the 145w TDP and I'd say invalidates their 500w PSU recommendation.

To me, the best GTX 970 out there is the one that performs as advertised, is incredibly quiet, uses a blower design, and uses less than 150w. Before I buy, I'll wait for a round-up comparison. I'm not in any way saying this card isn't good for GPU overclockers.
Click to expand...

That's over 100w more than all the other review sites reported
Kit Guru: 138 in gaming, 167 in fumark
Guru3D: 168W max load
 
Kogan said:
GTX 780 (250w TDP): 329w total - 90w system = 239w used by video card
MSI 970 stock (145w TDP): 369w -90w system = 279w used by video card

The problem to me is that the MSI 970 uses 279w. That's incredibly high compared to the 145w TDP and I'd say invalidates their 500w PSU recommendation.

To me, the best GTX 970 out there is the one that performs as advertised, is incredibly quiet, uses a blower design, and uses less than 150w. Before I buy, I'll wait for a round-up comparison. I'm not in any way saying this card isn't good for GPU overclockers.
Click to expand...
90W is what the system uses at idle. Don't forget to factor in power usage when the CPU is under load.
 
As usual - excellent review.

I am sitting on a pair of 680s in SLI. I am thinking that this 970 just about matches my performance and in some games where ram is an issue will even exceed. All this with probably 40% power usage of my two cards. Since I game at 1600p, this card would be really sweet for me!
 
The 970 is the card to beat right now in terms of price to performance. I don't think it is a worthy upgrade for 780 owners, however. I also wonder if sellers will let this thing go for retail price in the short term. It seems like they could sell these things for just under $400 and still have plenty of buyers.
 
biggles said:
The 970 is the card to beat right now in terms of price to performance. I don't think it is a worthy upgrade for 780 owners, however. I also wonder if sellers will let this thing go for retail price in the short term. It seems like they could sell these things for just under $400 and still have plenty of buyers.
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I disagree. At this price point it matches Ti-levels of performance in quite a few games. More importantly, minimum framerates are much improved over the 780, providing smoother gameplay and a better experience. Even better, frame pacing in SLI is subjectively perfect, while the 780s still had some issues on that front. At $700 I think that the upgrade from 780 SLI to 970 SLI was well worth it for me. I have a ~20% increase in performance while using a lot less power, and the experience is smoother to boot.

Now if these cards were $400+ a piece, then I would agree with you. At $349 a piece it's hard to resist.
 
Power consumption makes no sense at all. My 780 uses way more power and my MSI 970 uses WAY less than the 970 here. In Metro LL I saw my 780 at stock 1019 boost using a whopping 96 watts more than my 970 at 1290 (out of box clocks). My typical load in demanding games on the 780 was 370 to 390 watts and my 970 only went to just over 300 watts and that was with oced to 1466. Yet here we see the 970 using MORE power than the 780? I have yet to see anything like that anywhere else and it defies logic.
 
Purchased an EVGA 970 ACX 1.0 the day it came out, was the only model that didn't say "auto-notify" on the website so I grabbed it...ITS AWESOME. The only thing I miss is the backplate =( They haven't decided whether they will give us one or not. And to all of the fear mongers raising a ruckus about the HS, bah, I'm seeing 61c at full load - 1442/7.8 - so I'm cool with the heatpipe not being touched. I haven't pushed it quite all the way yet but so far it is kicking the pants off of my GTX 770 2G SLI, Asus DirectCU II R9 290 and Ref GTX 780 OC'd setups. And! They haven't even released that MFin AA yet! Completely love it, best thing Nvidia has done in 5 years. /Standing Ovation.
 
Thanks for the review and substantiating the throttling issue I have with my MSI Gaming 970's. I think I will try leaving the voltage at stock instead of +40. That may still allow me to run at 1300 core (1560 boost) without down throttling.

Any chance MSI will release a BIOS update to allow a higher TDP limit?
 
KickAssCop said:
Could you tell us how were the VRM tempratures whilst gaming on this card with the 8 GHz overclock? Also which memory does the card come with? I am hoping Samsung.

Great review.
Click to expand...

Memory type is described on page 1. Doesn't seem to be VRM reporting in current GPUz.
 
toddw said:
On my personal rig, I've noticed the clocks are all over the place, depending on the game being played.
Does GPU Z show in full screen mode or otherwise how are you (and others) affirming max sustained core clock speeds?

As you've well pointed out, stated boost clock and actual boost clock are two separate things, and some games don't even seem to move the boost clock to max settings.... for the little time I had my eVGA 970 SC, I noticed each game produced a different boost clock.....
Click to expand...

GPUz, it has the ability to write out a log file. Also, you can just use MSI Afterburner with RivaTuner to display an OSD in the game that shows whatever info you want, like clock speed. I watch this clock speed while gaming to note consistency.
 
EdKiefer said:
from conclusion
""The reason we say this is that we achieved 1592MHz without even upping the voltage before the power limiter hit the TDP and throttled the clock speed. If we can hit 1592MHz without changing the voltage, then with voltage clock speeds in excess of 1600MHz should be possible""

Shouldn't that be 1507 , not 1592 ,which is higher than your max with voltage added (1542) .
Click to expand...

Nope, what I said is correct. We hit 1592, and it would throttle back due to the power limit.

1542 was the highest consistent overclock without clock throttling.
 
misterbobby said:
Power consumption makes no sense at all. My 780 uses way more power and my MSI 970 uses WAY less than the 970 here. In Metro LL I saw my 780 at stock 1019 boost using a whopping 96 watts more than my 970 at 1290 (out of box clocks). My typical load in demanding games on the 780 was 370 to 390 watts and my 970 only went to just over 300 watts and that was with oced to 1466. Yet here we see the 970 using MORE power than the 780? I have yet to see anything like that anywhere else and it defies logic.
Click to expand...

Note I used a reference GTX 780 for comparison. My actual clock speed while gaming with it was 1006MHz.

I have verified the total system wattage, it is what I reported in the review between both video cards.
 
twzTechman said:
Just curious - what resolution are you running? Is a 970 really faster than 2 770s in SLI?
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No a 970 is not generally faster than 770 SLI unless its a game that does not scale well with it. A 690 is about 15% faster than a 970 and 770 SLI is faster than the 690.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Note I used a reference GTX 780 for comparison. My actual clock speed while gaming with it was 1006MHz.

I have verified the total system wattage, it is what I reported in the review between both video cards.
Click to expand...
So a 145 watt card is using 252 watts out of the box? Yes I know its clocked higher than reference but that would make Maxwell a joke which is not true. You are literally pulling nearly 100 watts than my 970 at the SAME clocks.
 
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