discussion MSI Radeon HD 6950 1GB Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC Review

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Overclocking Results

Overclocking Results

Overclocking this card was a simple joy due to a pair of factors: the GPU’s willingness to accept voltage increases and MSI’s excellent Afterburner software. When combined, the Triple Overvoltage feature allows for core, memory and PLL voltage to be increased but not to a point where the card itself can be damaged. This also allows MSI to offer their full 3 year warranty even if the Power Edition has seen voltage increases during overclocking.

The results below have been attained by using the Triple Overvoltage function.

Core Clock: 977 MHz
Memory Clock: 5644 MHz (QDR)

 

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Temperatures & Acoustics / Power Consumption

Temperature Analysis

For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at its highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.

For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.

As with every other Twin Frozr III-equipped card we have come across, the Power Edition OC is able to put down some phenomenal temperature numbers at both idle and load.

Acoustical Testing

What you see below are the baseline idle dB(A) results attained for a relatively quiet open-case system (specs are in the Methodology section) sans GPU along with the attained results for each individual card in idle and load scenarios. The meter we use has been calibrated and is placed at seated ear-level exactly 12” away from the GPU’s fan. For the load scenarios, a loop of Unigine Heave 2.5 is used in order to generate a constant load on the GPU(s) over the course of 20 minutes.

Much like the temperature results, the Power Edition’s acoustical profile is one of the best around and it is highly unlikely that you will notice the Twin Frozr heatsink’s fans over those in the rest of your enclosure.

System Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

With upgraded components and sporting significantly lowered temperatures over the reference design, it isn’t any wonder why this card posts slightly better power consumption results.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Some have complained that we tend to prattle on in our conclusions but MSI has made this one easy for us. Their HD 6950 1GB Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC may have one of the longest names of any current graphics card but it represents an excellent value for your money.

Years ago MSI found themselves fighting an uphill battle against their rivals over at Gigabyte and ASUS. Instead of packing it up and going home, they introduced features like the Twin Frozr heatsink design, heavily upgraded component designs, overclocking options aplenty and an industry leading tweaking software in the form of AfterBurner. This quartet of items comes together in perfect harmony on the Power Edition OC and allows for great overclocking headroom, low temperatures, increased efficiency over the reference design and an overall quiet gaming experience.

On the performance front, the Power Edition OC certainly won’t win any awards for its performance since clock speeds really haven’t been increased all that much. On paper there is a small difference between MSI’s pre-overclocked HD 6950 and AMD’s reference version but it’s doubtful that anyone would notice an in-game difference between the two. However, there’s so much more offered by this custom card that clock speeds hardly seem to matter.

With new a AMD architecture rapidly closing in, some may think that this is a poor time to be looking at the HD 6900-series but we think otherwise. The pricing structure of the HD 6950 1GB in particular makes it highly appealing for anyone in the market for a mid-priced card with a ton of staying power. At its current price of just under $260, the MSI HD 6950 1GB Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC is a perfect alternative for anyone that isn’t willing to spend $30 more on NVIDIA’s GTX 560 Ti 448.