MSI Releases Its Own Radeon HD 7950 Graphics Cards

Micro-Star International seems to have been one of the first companies to unleash its custom-built Radeon HD 7950 graphics adapters, as part of two series.

Two of the graphics cards that MSI has revealed are called R7950-2PMD3GD5 and R7950-2PMD3GD5/OC.

As their names imply, the first one sticks to the reference specifications dictated by AMD, while the second goes a bit higher than the norm.

To elaborate, the former has the Tahiti graphics processing unit (GPU) working at 800 MHz and the 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM memory operating at 5 GHz.

Meanwhile, the latter is set at 830 MHz for the GPU, while the memory clock was left untouched.

Moving on, the cards feature a memory interface of 384 bits and are compatible with the PCI Express Gen 3.0 x16 interface.

Furthermore, the DirectX 11.1 technology is supported, for faster than usual tessellation and CirectCompute.

Other specs include the obligatory CrossFireX technology (for multi-card setups), EyeFinity (for multi-monitor gaming), one DVI port, an HDMI connector and two mini DisplayPort outputs.

All things considered, the feature set, so far, is not much different from that of VTX3D's controller, or most every other rival card.

Nevertheless, MSI does bring some of its own inventions to the table, like the MSI Afterburner overclocking utility.

Not only that, but the hardware player also outfitted both newcomers with all solid capacitors (including aluminum core without explosion), leading to lower temperatures, higher efficiency and a long lifespan of 10 years.

MSI's R7950-2PMD3GD5 and R7950-2PMD3GD5/OC should soon start shipping around the world, if they haven't already turned up for order.

Like the rest of their cohort, they will bear a price of $450 in the United States and somewhere around 420 Euro in Europe.

For those who want a starting point in their decision making process, AMD's HD 7950 scored higher than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 in benchmarks, but the price is still arguably a bit on the high side.