MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G – New Maxwell Price/Performance Beast?

A Closer Look at the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G

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Due to the rushed nature of when I received the card it was actually not the final design so we will use the stock images supplied from MSI to show it off as mine is not same due to the early nature.

The box is standard fare for MSI Gaming cards with the dragon covering a corner and the rest covered by model name and identifier icons.

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The card here you can see carries a very aggressive profile for the cooler shroud which actually sticks quite a bit above the top of the PCB. the cooler shroud is clearanced for SLI bridges though so sli setups should not be a concern even with the taller cooler/fan shroud.

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The display connectivity is about standard for what we have seen on the Kepler based lineup

• 2x DVI
• 1x HDMI
• 1x Displayport

This all digital connector arrangement is similar to what we saw on Kepler models which is strange since Maxwell launched with a new arrangement of DVI/3xDP/HDMI and it seems like this time around manufacturers went all different directions as a few kept this arrangement, some kept the reference layout and added another DVI but unlike previous generations there is not one style that seems to be all-encompassing.

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Here you see a breakaway of the cooler from the PCB and you can see the components of the cooler below the shroud. one thing to note is you get a glimpse of the VRM cooler and also the heatspreader that covers some of the memory but seems to be more used for stiffening the PCB and making a rigid card than actual memory cooling as some memory ICs are not even covered.

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Pulling the Gaming model 970 apart you can now get a nice clear view of what makes up the card. It’s rather simple really with a 6 phase power solution and the integrated heatspreader. I think most of the parts that make this card so special are the components themselves and the cooler of course.