MSI R7850 Power Edition OC Video Card Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Conclusion
During our testing the card ran extremely well even at 1920x1080 but struggled to run our benchmarking sweet at the massive 2560x1600 resolution, this is expected given the target market for this product. The card did outperform the aging R6870 Hawk and came close to matching the GTX 580 in several of our benchmarks.
Overclocking is a big part of the enthusiast community so we tend to look for special card designs that help us overclock without having to resort to extensive board modifications or insane cooling solutions. The MSI R7850 Power Edition OC fits that profile by offering us a custom PCB design with a larger PWM and Twin Frozr IV thermal solution. These features are designed to enhance the factory overclock and allowed us to run the core up to 1100Mhz with a memory clock of 1300Mhz. The overclock did require a slight voltage bump using MSI Afterburner but was well within what we would consider safe.
Sadly this card only comes with a single BIOS chip so any chance of testing custom BIOS images will be at your own risk. The Twin Frozr IV heatsink does feature a couple of blue LEDs that backlight the cooling fans. In a normal system these lights will be facing the bottom of the chassis but the intention was good.
Overclocking is a big part of the enthusiast community so we tend to look for special card designs that help us overclock without having to resort to extensive board modifications or insane cooling solutions. The MSI R7850 Power Edition OC fits that profile by offering us a custom PCB design with a larger PWM and Twin Frozr IV thermal solution. These features are designed to enhance the factory overclock and allowed us to run the core up to 1100Mhz with a memory clock of 1300Mhz. The overclock did require a slight voltage bump using MSI Afterburner but was well within what we would consider safe.
Sadly this card only comes with a single BIOS chip so any chance of testing custom BIOS images will be at your own risk. The Twin Frozr IV heatsink does feature a couple of blue LEDs that backlight the cooling fans. In a normal system these lights will be facing the bottom of the chassis but the intention was good.
Good Things
Twin Frozr IV Cooler
Custom PCB Design
6-Phase PWM
Factory Overclocked
Cool and Quiet Operation
Custom PCB Design
6-Phase PWM
Factory Overclocked
Cool and Quiet Operation
Bad Things
No fancy LED lights on the PCB
Ninjalane Rating
MSI R7850 Power Edition OC Video Card Review
Furious 5 of 5
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