Today we're going to review three graphics cards from MSI: a Radeon HD 6950, a Radeon HD 6870, and a GeForce GTX 560 Ti. All three come equipped with very efficient Twin Frozr coolers and should give you good overclocking potential.

Specifications

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II/OC

Official product page GPU: Radeon HD 6950 (Cayman) Interface: PCIe x16 2.1 GPU clock rate (ROPs/shaders): 810/810 MHz (the standard is 800/800 MHz) Memory clock rate, physical (effective): 1250 (5000) MHz (standard) Memory bus: 256-bit Stream processors: 1408 Texture units: 88 (BLF/TLF/ANIS) ROP units: 32 Dimensions: 275x110x38 mm Board color: dark brown RAMDACs/TDMS: integrated into GPU Outputs: Single-Link DVI-D, Dual-Link DVI-I, HDMI 1.4a, 2 x mini-DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-GPU mode: hardware CrossFireX

MSI R6870 Hawk

Official product page GPU: Radeon HD 6870 (Barts) Interface: PCIe x16 2.1 GPU clock rate (ROPs/shaders): 930/930 MHz (the standard is 900/900 MHz) Memory clock rate, physical (effective): 1050 (4200) MHz (standard) Memory bus: 256-bit Stream processors: 1120 Texture units: 56 (BLF/TLF/ANIS) ROP units: 32 Dimensions: 255x115x38 mm Board color: dark brown RAMDACs/TDMS: integrated into GPU Outputs: Single-Link DVI-D, Dual-Link DVI-I, HDMI 1.4a, 2 x mini-DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-GPU mode: hardware CrossFireX

MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC

Official product page GPU: GeForce GTX 560 Ti (GF114) Interface: PCIe x16 2.0 GPU clock rate (ROPs/shaders): 880/1760 MHz (the standard is 822/1644 MHz) Memory clock rate, physical (effective): 1050 (4200) MHz (the standard is 1000 (4000) MHz) Memory bus: 256-bit Stream processors: 384 Texture units: 64 (BLF/TLF/ANIS) ROP units: 32 Dimensions: 229x111x33 mm Board color: dark brown RAMDACs/TDMS: integrated into GPU Outputs: 2 x Dual-Link DVI, mini-HDMI Multi-GPU mode: hardware SLI

Design

Comparison with the reference design, front view

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II/OC	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6950

MSI R6870 Hawk	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6870

MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC	Reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Comparison with the reference design, rear view

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II/OC	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6950

MSI R6870 Hawk	Reference AMD Radeon HD 6870

MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC	Reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti

All three graphics cards are custom products made by MSI, and all three PCBs are significantly re-designed. Aimed at overclockers, R6870 Hawk has been overhauled the most. It allows you to greatly increase clock rates and even adjust core/memory voltage. While I haven't tried to push the card to the max, I can say it works fine with the core clock rate of 1050 MHz. And that's, obviously, far from the limit.

Each graphics card has two 6-pin supplementary power connectors.

Maximum resolutions and frequencies:

• 240 Hz maximum refresh rate
• 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz max. digital (DVI) resolution
• 2048 x 1536 @ 85Hz max. analog (VGA) resolution

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