MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power Edition Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,286 words · ~11 min read
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Welcome to a very exciting unboxing. This is the all-new GeForce GTX 660Ti.
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And this particular one is actually pretty special. This is MSI's power
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edition of the card, which features their triple overvoltage enhanced PWM
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design, as well as their Twin Frozer 4
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cooler, which is the, as you might be able to guess, fourth iteration of their
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Twin Frozer cooler. Twin Frozer is a
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funny thing because when I first heard of a Twin
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Frozer cool cooler, I was like, "Oh,
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they spelled it wrong." cuz it's F R O Z
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R and then I was like like you know were
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they paying like a consultancy firm like per character to come up with the name
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for it or something and then you know I just I kind of got used to it and at
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this point I just I don't care anymore because a twin frozer just basically
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means it's like an awesome dual fan cooler and so I don't worry too much
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about like if it's spelled correctly or
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not. So I mean that's the thing about branding is you know like what's a
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Kijiji? But if you get used to it long enough, then it just doesn't really
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matter anymore. Um, anyway, I digress.
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Let's talk about graphics cards. So, this is based on NVIDIA's GK 104 chip,
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which for the first time in my memory anyway is the for the first time we're
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seeing the same chip that's featured in their
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high-end like flagship single GPU product, their dual GPU product now in
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an X6 something product level. So, this
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is a mid-range card in terms of the price point that we're going to see.
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well, mid-range, like still a gamer level card, but but it's it's more of a
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like a mainstreamy rather than an enthusiast class card, but it's using
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the same GPU with the same technology as the 680, the 690, and the
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670. It's got uh even the clock speeds
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are the same. Actually, let's see. They have clock speeds on here. So the
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reference cards will have the same clock speeds as a GeForce GTX 670 with the
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only difference being a 192bit memory bus as compared to a 256-bit memory bus
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on the GTX 670. So, you got 2 gigs of GD
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GDDR5 memory due to NVIDIA's in
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innovative uh memory controller that allows them to still get this nice even
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2 gig number in spite of the uh the
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memory bus which would normally have limited them to an either a 1.5 gig
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memory configuration or a 3 gig memory configuration. You've also got a lot of
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technology that gets carried over from those basically everything from those
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higherend cards, including GPU boost, which dynamically adjusts the GPU clock
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speeds depending on the load that's being put on the card and how much power
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is being drawn from the card so that you're always getting the highest performance you can in the applications
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that demand it. Uh, here got some
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accessories. Sorry, I am going to keep I am going to keep going with the stuff on
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the box, but I want to start getting this card open here so that uh that you
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guys can check it out because I am
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extremely excited about the GeForce
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660Ti and particularly the power edition
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from MSI due to their triple over voltage design. So, here I'll let you
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guys sort of stare at the board a little bit with Slick's assistance while I talk
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about some of the other technology that's being carried over from previous
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edition cards. So, here's a big one. Adaptive VSYNC. So, adaptive VSYNC
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basically gives you the best of both worlds. When your frame rate goes above
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the refresh rate of your monitor, adaptive vsync will turn VSYNC on, which
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will give you uh which will reduce the amount of tear. Well, eliminate tearing,
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which is when you kind of turn around and you see half of the image was drawn
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uh while you were looking over here and the other half is drawn while you're looking slightly over here. So, they
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don't quite meet up in the middle or up here somewhere. And that's a big
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problem. And then what's great about adaptive vsync is it turns it off as
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soon as you get at or below the refresh rate of the monitor. So the benefit of
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that is that when you have VSYNC on you have to be at an even um multiple of no
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not a multiple divisor a factor I think it's a factor of the refresh rate of the
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monitor or whatever okay that times something has to multiply to the refresh
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rate. So if you're at a refresh rate of 60 for your monitor you have to run at
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30 FPS as opposed to 45. So it'll knock
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you down to a lower frame rate. So what it does is it turns it off to prevent
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that from happening. So that's good stuff as well. Uh GPU boost. Ah yes,
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amazing performance per watt as well as class leading idle power consumption
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which to me is one of the most important things about it because even the most
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hardcore gamer still checks Facebook and
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email and doesn't necessarily game all the time. So having
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a video card that doesn't kick out a ton of heat and doesn't consume a ton of
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power when you're not actually playing video games is very very important to
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me. Here you can have a look at the twin frozer cooler while I check my notes. So
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you've got full support for NVIDIA 3D Vision Surrounding off of a single card.
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You've got support for TXA. So TXA is
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basically a much a much better way of
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doing anti-aliasing. So NVIDIA has incorporated a variety of different
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approaches to get you significantly better image quality without necessarily
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the same level of performance hit that we've seen in the
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past. And what TXA does is it offers a
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higher level of quality of filtering than has previously been achievable. Now
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not all games support it, but like any new technology, we will eventually see
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it continue to move forward. FXA is of course uh high quality anti-aliasing,
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not quite the same as MSAA, but with a much lower performance hit compared to a
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more traditional anti-aliasing. So, if you don't know what anti-aliasing is, um
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well, Google's your friend, but we're going to focus on this this card and
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other aspects of it for now. So, Twin Frozer 4 cooler, lots of different
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technology. So, you got your dual fans, you got your propeller blades, which
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with these coatings at the end actually reduce the amount of noise they make, as
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well as improve the amount of air flow that they push due to the design of the
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blade. Also, they've added dust repellent technology, which gets the fan
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to spin the opposite way the first and when it's first turned on to pull some
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of the dust out of the fins before it reverses direction and pushes air back
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through the fins. So, this keeps dust from settling on the fins and means you
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won't have to clean your video card as often, if at all, using this technology.
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So, twin frozer 4 cooler. Yeah. What else? What else do we have to say about
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it? Ah, yes. Super pipes. So, these ones out here, the heat pipes that have to
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carry the heat furthest away from the GPU out to the very edges of the cooler.
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Those ones are using thicker heat pipes, whereas the ones that are right over the
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GPU itself and aren't carrying heat very far are using thinner heat pipes. That
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way they're using the more expensive, thicker heat pipes in the areas where
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you really have to work harder to move the heat away from the GPU and spread it
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out to the radiator, which covers almost the entire card. Speaking of things that
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cover almost the entire card, you can see there's a unis right here instead of
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putting it, you know, lots of gamers love back plates. See the uh see the
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plate that's covering almost the entirety of the card, including all the
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VRM as well as the uh RAM modules. And
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see this fold right here? This gives the card a lot of rigidity. So, lots of
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gamers love back plates because they can make the card look pretty slick and
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sexy. But there's a problem with back plates and that is that as soon as you
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add a little bit more height to the back of the card, you are reducing the
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compatibility with multi-GPU configurations. A lot of the time you
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take two cards with a back plate, you try and put them side by side and you know, try SLI or whatever other config
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you want and you go, oh, all of a sudden your cards are kind of like like this
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away from each other because those back plates don't leave enough space. MSI's
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approach is to build in this unisync which gives a lot of the benefits of the
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back plate including cooling many of the components. You can see with their
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custom PCB all the components except for a couple memory modules are on the other
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side of the card. Okay, so you're getting the cooling benefit. Besides,
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you're getting the active cooling from the fan anyway. If anything, there should be more benefit to doing it this
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way. You're also getting that extra rigidity to the card. This card has
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almost no flex. So you get that same benefit that you'd get from a back plate
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except that you're putting it on the front and you still maintain a very
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clean look and all of that good stuff. It's just a matter of where they've put
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that plate of metal. So in terms of phys
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other physicality the card pretty much
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what you've come to expect. I mean it's using the same GPU most of the same
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technology as a 670 or 680. So, you got dual DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort out.
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Again, supporting uh NVIDIA 3D Vision surround off of a single card. You've
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got two SLI fig fingers, meaning you're going to have support for at least
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three-way graphics card configurations, which is again very unexpected for what
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would normally be more of a a mid-range gaming level graphics card. PCI Express
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3.0 is fully supported by this card. Two
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PCIe uh six pin power connectors. It's a
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very power efficient card. In fact, I'm surprised they even need two of them to
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be to be perfectly blunt. And
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um which leads us to the most important
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things about this card. So number one is something you can't really see that well
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because there's nothing on the back of the card. And this heat spreader covers
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all of the PWM for the card. You can't really see anything, but it uses a five
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plus two phase power design compared to the four plus two phase power design of
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a reference card. That means better stability and overclocking. and in
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theory uh better better overclocks which leads us to the single
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most important thing about the power edition and that is the fact that it
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features triple over voltage. Triple over voltage is MSI's sort of branding
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marketing speak thing for the ability to
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overvolt the core, the PLL and the
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memory. Now, I'm going to let that sink in for a
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second. There won't be another GTX 660Ti
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at launch that allows overvolting the core, which means that as long as you've
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got decent cooling on this card, this will be the 660Ti that will overclock
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better than any other card. Now, this is only the unboxing. I haven't tested it
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yet. And I do have uh a power edition
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triple over voltage card. And I have another one that I'm going to be testing
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head-to-head to find out if there's an actual benefit. Do you get higher boost
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clocks from using triple over voltage
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versus from not using it. So, I'm very excited to check that out. But I'm
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confident enough that we're going to see the results that I'm going to go ahead and say it now. You guys are going to
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want to use MSI Afterburner to overclock your GTX 660Ti Power Edition with triple
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over voltage. And if you want the most performance per dollar out of a 660Ti,
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um, this will be the way to go. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and
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first look at the 6 GTX 660Ti power
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edition from MSI. And don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
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unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.
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And I forgot to cover the DVI to VGA adapter, two dual Molex to six pin PCIe
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power connectors, and a quick users guide. Download, of course, the latest
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drivers from the NVIDIA website rather than using this disc. And um I'll thank
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you for bearing with me when I forget things.