MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC Video Card

Manufacturer: MicroStar International
Model Number: R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC
Product Name: Radeon HD 6950
Price As Tested: $299.99 at Newegg

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by MSI.

AMD changed the game with its 6000 series of GPU's but at the same time it confused a lot of people with its numbering system. To cut a long story short, a HD58XX is equivalent to a HD69XX and not a HD68XX, a common misconception for the less informed enthusiast. The MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC video card is the current card on the bench so to speak, and as you can tell from the name this offering from MSI carries its top end Twin Frozr III cooler equipped with twin propeller blade fans. The power edition in its name relates towards the support for triple over-voltage and a 6+2 Phase VRM, and I'm sure you can guess what the OC stands for.

Unfortunately there is only so much overclocking an AIB partner can do with a HD6950 without it running into HD6970 performance territory, so the overclock on this card is not very aggressive. Add to that factor the unlocking potential of the 6950 series, one has to be careful not to back bench one SKU to sell another. The MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC video card comes factory overclocked at 850MHz GPU / 1300MHz (5.2GHz effective) Memory.

For this review we have a wide range of video card comparisons in our usual mixture of DX10 / DX11 synthetic benchmarks and current games to get a good idea where it fits in performance and price wise. We also intend to overclock the GPU to its limits and see if the Twin Frozr III cooler with its improved fan design has what it takes to cool the GPU and other components effectively, so without further delay let's move on and get stuck in.

Previous Page - Next Page >>