MSI GTX 770 Gaming

Testing Methodology

The OS we use is Windows 8 Pro 64bit with all patches and updates applied. We also use the latest drivers available for the motherboard and any devices attached to the computer. We do not disable background tasks or tweak the OS or system in any way. We turn off drive indexing and daily defragging. We also turn off Prefetch and Superfetch. This is not an attempt to produce bigger benchmark numbers. Drive indexing and defragging can interfere with testing and produce confusing numbers. If a test were to be run while a drive was being indexed or defragged, and then the same test was later run when these processes were off, the two results would be contradictory and erroneous. As we cannot control when defragging and indexing occur precisely enough to guarantee that they won’t interfere with testing, we opt to disable the features entirely.

Prefetch tries to predict what users will load the next time they boot the machine by caching the relevant files and storing them for later use. We want to learn how the program runs without any of the files being cached, and we disable it so that each test run we do not have to clear pre-fetch to get accurate numbers. Lastly we disable Superfetch. Superfetch loads often-used programs into the memory. It is one of the reasons that Windows Vista occupies so much memory. Vista fills the memory in an attempt to predict what users will load. Having one test run with files cached, and another test run with the files un-cached would result in inaccurate numbers. Again, since we can’t control its timings so precisely, it we turn it off. Because these four features can potentially interfere with benchmarking, and and are out of our control, we disable them. We do not disable anything else.

We ran each test a total of 3 times, and reported the average score from all three scores. Benchmark screenshots are of the median result. Anomalous results were discounted and the benchmarks were rerun.

Please note that due to new driver releases with performance improvements, we rebenched every card shown in the results section. The results here will be different than previous reviews due to the performance increases in drivers.

Test Rig

Synthetic Benchmarks & Games

We will use the following applications to benchmark the performance of the MSI GTX 770 Gaming video card.

3DMark 11

Here you see that the gaming card gets a small bump over the reference model from the out of the box overclock which means overall better gaming performance to gamers.

3DMark 2013

In 3DMark Firestrike and extreme the MSI Gaming model nudges even further ahead of the GTX 680 which is good as every bit of gaming performance means that in future more graphics intensive games you have a better chance of meeting those needs and not needing an upgrade for an even longer period.

Unigine Heaven 4.0

Unigine Heaven is a benchmark program based on Unigine Corp’s latest engine, Unigine. The engine features DirectX 11, Hardware tessellation, DirectCompute, and Shader Model 5.0. All of these new technologies combined with the ability to run each card through the same exact test means this benchmark should be in our arsenal for a long time.

Heaven shows the potential of the MSI model with a solid almost 4FPS gain which is very good as heaven is a very stressful load for any GPU.

Far Cry 3

Moving over to Far Cry 3, we used a pre determined path and re-ran each card to monitor average FPS across the complete run. Each run was completed multiple times to ensure continuity and accuracy. Here the MSI 770 shows some nice gains getting a solid 2FPS higher at max detail settings.

Metro 2033

Even after many years, Metro 2033 is still one of the most demanding DX11 video games available to really push the limits of your system. Here the MSI GTX 770 Gaming card shows over 1FPS gain which may not seem like much but we assure you that on a game such as Metro that is quite a lot.

Batman Arkham City

Batman Arkham City is a fun game and utilizes FXAA fully. It is nice to see the full screen anti-aliasing getting picked up by popular titles. When it comes to performance the MSI 770 pulls a couple FPS ahead of the Reference model which shows the worth of that out of the box overclock you pay for.

Crysis 3

Crysis 3 is much like the original Crysis in that playing it at max settings is painful for even the highest end hardware. The MSI 770 still falls short of 30FPS average but that’s not necessarily surprising here as even the GK110 powered 780 only gets 34FPS average but the MSI card does get about half  of a FPS over the reference card. We think that 2GB framebuffer may be a limiting factor here.

Metro Last Light

Here we have Metro Last Light which is a brand new game added to our testing platform as it just came out. If you thought Metro 2033 was stressful you have seen nothing yet. The particles and lighting, as well as the PhysX effects all add up to an amazing looking game that can put a stun even the most powerful system in its tracks. Here the MSI 770 pulls about half a FPS ahead of the reference card and is able to maintain a over 30FPS average which was quite playable with some minor occasional dips causing a stutter but overall for max settings on a single card it was not bad at all.

Sniper Elite V2

Sniper Elite V2 is a fun game which, when first released, was quite stressful but still playable on most higher end cards. By now, most cards have surpassed it, and all of the cards we are testing here today break the 100 FPS mark. The MSI 770 pulls the standard 2FPS lead here over the reference model.

Dirt 3 Showdown

Dirt 3 Showdown is a visually beautiful game with excellent lighting and overall motion blurring creating a real visual spectacle of a game. The MSI 770 pulls a little over 2FPS here over the reference model but as we did not experience any jumpiness or jerkiness to the game anyways we doubt you would see such a difference.