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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 - The Affordable Kepler

By Kenny Yeo - 24 Sep 2012

The MSI GTX 650 Power Edition

The MSI GTX 650 Power Edition

Our GeForce GTX 650 test card comes in the form of the MSI GTX 650 Power Edition. The card is mildly factory-overclocked and comes with an interesting cooling feature. For starters, the core clock speed has been slightly boosted to 1124MHz - a modest increase of around 6% compared to the reference specs. Memory clock speeds are unchanged at 5000MHz DDR.

Apart from the higher core clock speeds, the MSI GTX 650 Power Edition also comes with Triple Overvoltage function, which lets users tweak the GPU, memory and PLL voltage for maximum overclocking potential. The power circuitry of the card has also been upgraded (with more power phases) for higher efficiency and stability at load. Both technologies work hand in hand to let users achieve higher overclocks on the card.

However, the highlight of this card, however, has got to be MSI’s unique TwinThermal cooling system. The MSI GTX 650 Power Edition comes with an additional fan that can be attached onto the card in two ways. Either on top of the existing fan or slide the cooler cover aside and you can place the additional fan side by side with the existing one. It’s an interesting custom cooling system and we are eager to see if it really works in practice. We first spotted this unique design back in Computex 2012 as MSI showed it off with their Radeon HD 7770 Power Edition graphics card.

The MSI GTX 650 Power Edition has a grey cooler shroud and a large 90mm fan.

As part of its TwinThermal cooling system, the MSI GTX 650 Power Edition comes with an additional 90mm fan.

Users can either stack the additional fan on top of the existing one (note that doing so disables the fan below but creates greater pressure) or...

Slide the entire custom cooler to the side and install the additional fan such that they are side by side, as shown.

Reference card designs would probably do away with the 6-pin power connector, but since the MSI GTX 650 Power Edition is targeted at overclockers, additional power is always welcomed.

The card has dual DVI ports and a single HDMI port. 

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