MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr OC Edition
MSI’s GTX 660 is an all-around great card that includes a healthy dollop of overclocking and a side of Frozr to keep it cool. Its base clock speed is a decent 53MHz over stock at 1,033Mhz, and when running at full load we saw its boost clock speed rise 130MHz over stock to 1,110MHz, which is also higher than the stock boost-clock spec. The Twin Frozr III cooler sports three copper heat pipes, aluminum fins, and dual 8cm fans housed in a metal-alloy shroud to direct the airflow. Like the other GTX 660 cards, it uses just a single 6-pin power connector, but unlike the others it sports an extra-long 9-inch PCB (Gigabyte’s board is just 7.5 inches but the cooler is actually 9 inches long).
In testing, the MSI board ran neck-and-neck with Gigabyte’s similarly clocked offering, losing every test but one by a very slim margin. The cards were also a tied in the category of noise/cooling, as they both ran silently under full load at a mild 63 C. The MSI Afterburner software is usable but nothing to email home about and the board’s skimpy bundle consists of a single Molex-to-PCIe adapter along with the software CD.
Overall there’s a lot to like about MSI’s Twin Frozr OC Edition card. It’s quiet, cool, and performs very well, and we like the look of its gunmetal shroud and glinting metallic badge. However, the Gigabyte GTX 660 board performs just as well and is just as quiet, and since it costs $10 less, that’s enough to give Gigabyte the advantage. If you are an MSI fan and/or a Frozr aficionado, you can get the 660 OC Edition for the same $230 price via a mail-in rebate, but since we hate rebates we’d rather just go with the Gigabyte and get the savings at the virtual cash register.
$240, www.msi.com
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