MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,334 words · ~11 min read
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today's unboxing is an exciting one this is the MSI n560 GTX TI twin frozer 2 and
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as you may or may have not have figured out by now this is based on the GeForce
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GTX 560 TI GPU from NVIDIA this is a 1
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gig graphics card and it is a very special one because at the time of
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filming this video anyway it looks like the best price to Performance I mean
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really high performance gaming graphics card on the market now now NVIDIA has
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actually even brought out the ti designation we haven't seen that for a
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very long time when we saw it on one of nidia's bestselling GeForce series ever
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the GeForce uh 4,000 TI Series so the
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4200 TI was the big one back in the day and that was wow direct X8 so we're up
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to directx11 with this GPU we also have support for all of NVIDIA's Technologies
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so let's have a look at them they're all listed up here we've got G Force Cuda
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NVIDIA SLI this supports two-way SLI fizx by NVIDIA as well as NVIDIA 3D
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Vision now there's a couple other things on here as well MSI afterburner is uh
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has a little badge on the box it's a great little overclocking utility works
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on not only MSI cards but other ones too as well as it being ready for 3D Mark 11
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I guess that's one way of saying that it is direct X11 ready 3D Mark 11 is also
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included with this card for with a value of 20 bucks so that's kind of cool it
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has a three-year warranty in the US Canada and Mexico and let's see what
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else they have to say for them oh right yeah this is a twin frozer 2 card so
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what that means is that we have MSI's
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famous twin frozer 2 cooler on this
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instead of the stock cooler so I'll show you guys a little comparison against the
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stock cooler in a bit so they're saying up to 20° cooler it also features
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military Class 2 so you've got all of MSI's military class there we go it's
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finally focused technology included on this board it is a custom PCB board okay
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and it is an overclocked card so we've got voltage
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adjustment and let's see what else MSI has to say for themselves so here
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they're giving us some more details about their military class concept which
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I think is just great because I found that on Military class cards I've
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actually noticed less less squealing because of the higher quality components
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that are being used and what MSI also has to say for themselves is that it's
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more efficient delivers more current and is going to last longer here's a another
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little plug for MSI afterburner which is my personal favorite and here's some
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media comments about the twin frozer 2 ah here's some more information about
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twin frozer 2 as well as a sneak peek of the card which you can't really see
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because of the anti-static bag but direct contact design with the heat
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pipes dual pwm fans okay nickel plated
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copper base dual super pipes I'll show you the super pipes so there's actually
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four total heat pipes and then two super pipes high density heat sink and here's
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a little thermal comparison against the reference cooler although I don't I know
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how relevant that is because I think this box has probably been reused from
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the 460 twin frozer so um either way
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suffice to say the twin frozer 2 is usually a much better performer than the
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stock cooler on pretty much anything all right direct x 11 support okay most of
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this we've covered already uh or we will cover once we get it opened up minimum
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system requirements okay PCIe 16x yep two six pin PCIe power connectors and a
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minimum 500 wat or greater power supply those are probably the most important
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bits this is a 1 gig card so it has
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1,24 Megs of video memory and let's
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finally yes finally 3 minutes and 40
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seconds in get the box opened up all right so first thing as usual for me is
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accessories so Ms siiz boxes I'm used to them now down in the bottom is where we
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find all the accessories so here is our quick users
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guide here is a driver disc don't use this download the latest version ha
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download the latest version uh we have a
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DVI to VGA adapter in case you're still using a VGA Monitor and then we also
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have a mini HDMI see if we can get it to focus to
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regular HDMI out adapter here's 3D Mark
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11 and just for one lucky viewer I am
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going to give away my copy of 3D Mark 11
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so I'm going to scratch this off and whoever gets this first you are now the
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proud owner of 3D Mark 11 Advanced
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Edition oh hold on that's somewhat obscured there we go all right
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congratulations okay next we have the 560 TI series something about their live
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update so you can use that to update your drivers and whatnot and finally we
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have a few more accessories and then we're going to have a look at the sexy
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GTX 560 TI graphics card so two dual
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Molex two PCI six pin power adapters
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although as I so frequently say if you
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don't have a proper power supply to run this card with a couple PCI E uh with a
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couple PCI E6 pin Powers then you should
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probably be looking at a power supply upgrade as well a balanced system is a
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happy system all right let's get this
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anti-static bag out of here and I have a
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feeling at this time that this card is
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going to look very similar to our old friend the GTX 460 Hawk because a little
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bird told me that it might actually be using the same overall PCB layout so
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first thing I'm going to do is compare it to the GTX 460 Hawk side by side or
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rather top to bottom okay so you can see they are both using the same addition of
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the twin frozer 2 heat sink so I'll show you the super pipes here on the bottom
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of the 560 TI you see how two of them the ones that go out further away from
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the GPU core which is in the middle are actually thicker than the others so
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those are the super pipes the reason they're thicker they carry heat more
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efficiently that way and they have further to go so that's why MSI made the
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design decision to make those ones the outermost heat pipes okay so let's have
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a look at the top of the card here you can see some memory chips down there you
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can also see some other components you can see the uh the termination ends of
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those heat pipes so there are the fat ones on the on the outside and the
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skinny ones on the inside there all right you can see some MSI twin frozer 2
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branding on the top of that heat sink let's flip it over and see what the back
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has to say for itself so here I'm going to get this out of my way so that it's
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not uh not here anymore all right let's take off these protective covers which
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I've never quite understood I mean it comes pretty well packed I don't think
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that uh you know these are really necessary but they're there one way or
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the other so no sense complet about it
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so here we will find our SLI Bridge as I
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mentioned before this card supports only two-way SLI otherwise you'd need two
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bridges for three-way and four-way SLI you've also got on the back of the card
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uh the location of the GPU you can see where all of the memory is soldered on
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you can see where all of the connectors are soldered on you can see that does
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use a standard PCI Express 16x
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2.0 data connection and then also on the
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back you can see where the power connectors are soldered so let's move around to the back of the card and that
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is where we will find two PCI six pin
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power connectors as mentioned before now the wiring of the fans is a little bit
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custom because there's one Mount here or rather one plug here and then it's going
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to go out here where it splits into two
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and then Powers each fan
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individually let's have a look at the connectors we've got on the back here so
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we've got our mini HDMI as well as dual DVI you can see the back plate actually
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has some ventilation slots so you can see by the design of the cooler here so
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this has a bit of a there's a bit of a shroud thing going on here so some of
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the exhaust from this fan is going to go out the back of the card but most of it
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is going to go through and then be exhausted out here and down on the
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bottom and what that means is that if you are running a twin frozer 2 card you
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will get better GPU temps guaranteed
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versus a stock cooled card but you should make sure you have adequate case
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air flow to move that heat out of your case because it's not going to be exhausting it externally so two more
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things before we wrap up here I want us to do the quick PCB comparison against
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the GTX 460 Hawk and see if I can notice
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any differences so actually we here you guys
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can always pause and help me uh well here's one here's one the 460 Hawk has
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the GPU V switches on it okay where whereas the GPU V switches
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are actually not present okay because remember this is
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not a hawk Edition card even though it appears to be using a hawk PCB oh
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there's also there's also another change here this little component is here but
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it's not here now the GTX 560 GPU while
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it is a different GPU than the one powering the GTX 460 it has more pipes
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it is more optimized however it is pin compatible so that's why MSI was able to
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release an aftermarket PCB 560 ti so
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quickly because they were able to pretty much drop it onto the PCB looks like
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they were able to make a couple minor changes see here's another one here
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there's one component here when there is not one on the GTX 460 Hawk and uh
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that's pretty much all the changes that really pop out to me right now oh yeah
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no here's one so this is on the hawk and this is not
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here interesting I'm no electrical engineer so I can't tell you what all of
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that means but here I'm going to bring my 560 TI back I'm going to put my 460
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Hawk away and then I'm going to bring up a regular reference NVIDIA GTX 560 so
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how do these guys compare well you can see the reference one has a single 80 mm
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fan whereas the hawk has dual 92 mm fans
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the reference one does have an external exhaust design although oh no it's not
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external exhaust so it's about half and half so it's probably going to be exhausting a little bit more than the
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twin frozer 2 so you can see there's ventilation here but it's not going to
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be oh it's not going to be exhausting nearly everything not even half and half
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cuz you can see there's more ventilation holes here and more in the top so it's
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going to be kicking most of the heat out into the case as well twin frozer 2 I
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would definitely expect to perform better although I haven't had a chance to test it yet but I will you can see
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that the reference cooler hold on sorry I'm moving it so that I can see better
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the reference cooler looks too three copper heat pipes as well as a flower
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heat snc design kind of like Intel's reference LGA
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1155 heat sink okay the PCB layout is
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probably going to be very very different yes it looks very very different already
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maybe not that different pretty different though um versus the hawk PCB
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that the GTX 560 Ti overclocked from MSI
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has borrowed you can see that this PCB is actually slightly longer than the
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hawk PCB that MSI is using and other
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than that I guess that's all the physical comparisons that I wanted to
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make they're both dual slot coolers of course very few performance single Slot
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Cards these days thank you for checking out my unboxing of the GTX 560 TI 1 gig
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overclocked card from MSI one thing I
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also should mention before I wrap up here is that this card is overclocked to
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580 MHz on the core that is
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versus or rather 880 MHz on the core
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versus 822 on the reference card as well
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as 4.2 GHz on the RAM versus about 4 GHz
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on the NVIDIA reference card