MSI's GeForce GTX 670 Power Edition Debut

Micro-Star International has officially introduced a couple of GeForce GTX 670 graphics cards, both equipped with a custom printed circuit board (PCB) and air coolers.

Even though one of the GTX 670 Power Edition boards has regular clock speeds (915 MHz GPU, 980 MHz GPU Boost), it deserves the name because of its higher than normal overclocking capability. The custom PCB has a stronger VRM, as well as SFC chokes, International Rectifier DirectFETs and Hi-C capacitors. All in all, the enhanced PWM design should allow for a 25% higher current support compared to NVIDIA's PCB. Add to that Triple Overvoltage and there is a lot of overclocking headroom for enthusiasts to play with (fine-tuning of GPU, memory and PLL power domains via Afterburner). And now we get to the other major difference between the Power Edition and the stock GTX 670: cooling.

MSI chose Twin Frozr IV, the same one used on the AMD Radeon HD 7870 HAWK. It combines five 8mm nickel-plated copper heatpipes with a single aluminum heatsink and two 80mm fans, for 20°C lower and 11.7 dBA quieter operation. What's more, the shroud is detachable, so that buyers may have an easy time when cleaning the fin array. The shroud itself is dust-repellent, but nothing is perfect. And now we may as well give a recap of the specifications: the MSI GeForce GTX 670 Power Edition has two dual-link DVI ports, HDMI, DisplayPort, 1,344 CUDA cores, 112 TMUs, 2 GB of GDDr5 VRAM and a memory interface of 256 bits.

Finally, the GK104 GPU runs at 1,019 MHz / 1,079 MHz GPU Boost on the factory-overclocked version, although the VRAM frequency is untouched (6 GHz). All relevant information is available here, except for pricing. We think MSI will make haste in kicking off sales, but we can't say for sure what the ETA is or how much more than $400 / 400 Euro prospective buyers will have to pay.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview