MSI GTX 650 Ti Boost Twin Frozr III OC - Game for Another Mid-Range Kepler?

Conclusion

Conclusion

The MSI GTX 650 Ti Boost Twin Frozr III OC is a competent card with an excellent cooling system in the form MSI's proprietary Twin Frozr III technology. Its gaming performance levels were good and it was leading the competition by a small degree, courtesy of its overclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost core. It also managed to beat the AMD Radeon HD 7790 by a wide margin, and even outshone the Radeon HD 7850 in our Crysis 3 gaming benchmark.

The card's overclocked performance level was on par with its peers; however, its GK104 core failed to reach the same overclocked rate as the two competing cards from ASUS and Palit. Apart from that, there weren't any major flaws with the card given its performance right out-of-the-box.

If we had to nitpick, we wish to see the metal fan shroud of subsequent cards get the Gaming series treatment, i.e., the shroud and cooler design should have the red and black color scheme of the Dragoon Army Gaming series. That would at least help make the card stand out from the usual series of cards and make it special since it doesn't have any other tricks or customization such as those on the MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming motherboard of the same league. At the same time, in line with its Gaming series heritage, a major game title should have been bundled to further differentiate from the competition and emphasize its intentions.

Priced at S$289, it's priced reasonably against the ASUS and Palit cards respectively, though Palit has been in the market for a longer time and has since compressed its price to just $259. Naturally, if you're not really concerned with other matters besides raw performance and price, the Palit card is a better proposition. For those who would prefer to enjoy a longer warranty period, a cooler operating graphics card and a card with more personality, the the MSI GTX 650 Ti Boost Twin Frozr III OC is a better choice for a small premium.