Review: MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G

In last September, NVIDIA officially launched the new generation of graphics cards for desktops based on Maxwell architecture.  These two models are the GTX 970 and GTX 980 and we have covered the press release on the launch date. In case you missed it, actually the GTX 980 and GTX 970 are not the first Maxwell GPUs based on 28nm manufacturing. In fact, the GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750 are the first desktop Maxwell chips to hit the mainstream market early this year.

We had our first review on the Maxwell-based graphics card with the ASUS Strix GTX 980 two months ago, so now it’s time to take a look at another GTX 980 from another vendor. Recently, MSI Malaysia was kind enough to send us their latest flagship graphics card, in the form of GTX 980 GAMING 4G.

While we still haven’t heard anything about the Lightning Edition of GTX 900 series from MSI, this GTX 980 GAMING 4G would be MSI’s top-of-the-line graphics card. The MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G features a fully customized PCB and the all-new Twin Frozr V cooling solution, which took MSI a whopping 18 months of development to ensure that their cards have high level of quality and stability.

Before we begin, we would like to take this opportunity to thank MSI Malaysia for once again providing us with the graphics card for review.

Product Link: http://www.msi.com/product/vga/GTX-980-GAMING-4G.html#hero-overview

Suggested Retail Price: RM 2,219

 

Specifications

 

GPU-Z Information

Out of the box the MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G is a beast of a card. It features 2048 stream processors, 64 ROPs, and 256-bit memory bus. It is factory overclocked and specified to run at a base clock of 1216MHz, a boost clock of 1317MHz. In comparison, a reference GeForce GTX 980 runs at 1126MHz of base clock, 1216MHz boost. This means that the MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G has around 8.3% overclock on the boost clock. Not just that, the MSI is also clocked about 3.0% faster than the ASUS Strix GTX 980 (base clock: 1178MHz, boost clock: 1279MHz) so you should be getting higher performance numbers from this MSI GAMING card as compared to the Strix. In terms of video memory, MSI decided to let to the memory frequency remain untouched at 1753MHz or 7012MHz effective.

Next > Unboxing

owikh84

OverClocker, Reviewer at OCDrift.com
One of the most respected OverClocker here in Malaysia with vast knowledge in Motherboard, Graphics Card and Memory. The nick "owikh84" is not only well known in local tech sites but also international forums such as XtremeSystems.org, Overclock.net and so on.