Shoring Up The Gaming Series

MSI continues to bring in new products for its Gaming series, specifically motherboards and graphics cards. Adding to the lineup is the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti Gaming 3G graphics card.

This latest addition sports a fully unlocked and over-clocked Kepler GK110 GPU.

The card sports the familiar red-and-black color scheme of MSI’s Twin Frozr IV cooler, which features dual 100mm fans and five copper heat pipes in direct contact with the GPU. Heat from the GPU is transferred by the heat pipes to the large aluminium fin array, and it is cooled by the pair of fans. In addition, there is a metal plate attached to the PCB’s components for added passive cooling. Despite this, the card still sports a dual-slot profile, and is about 10.5 inches in length. As with other Gaming cards from MSI, this card also sports the same Military Class IV components from the series for added efficiency and longevity.

Speaking of customizations, thanks to MSI’s Gaming App, users can toggle between three profiles: OC, Gaming, and Silent. In OC mode, the GPU operates at 1020MHz; in Gaming mode, the GPU is throttled down to 980MHz; in Silent mode, the card operates at its default clock speed of 895MHz. MSI decided to stick with the reference 1750MHz clock speed for the card’s 3GB of GDDR5 memory.

For video connectivity options, it has a pair of DVI (DVI-I and DVI-D) ports, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort output. To power this card, you’ll be needing extra 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The card can also be paired with up to three other GeForce GTX 780 Ti cards for a quad-SLI setup.

For our performance tests, we tested the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti Gaming 3G in its default OC mode. The huge increase in the GPU clock over the reference card definitely showed when we ran 3DMark (2013), as we saw a 1000-point lead in Fire Strike and a 500-point lead in Fire Strike Extreme when comparing this card’s scores to the reference GeForce GTX 780 Ti. As for Crysis 3, on the highest settings, we saw a 3fps and 2fps increase on the 1920 x 1200 and 2560 x 1600 display resolutions, respectively.

The MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti Gaming 3G card boasts an excellent cooling system and Military Class IV components over the reference design. If you’re looking for an absolute beast when it comes to single-card performance, this one’s a definite contender. Just be reminded that you’ll have to shell out PhP 37,500 to get this card in your rig.

AT A GLANCE

GPU
GK110
MEMORY
3GB GDDR5
INTERFACE
PCI Express 3.0
CONNECTORS
DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort