| MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer (Geforce 9600GT) |
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Hybrid Freezer ... An advanced cooling technology from MSI. But does it really work?
INTRODUCTION I remember a few years back, a lot of manufacturers were releasing graphic cards with 256Mb ... and this see to be the standard for quite a while. Back then, most users were using a maximum resolutions of 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 on 17" and 19" montiors. Things have changed a lot since then ... and we are now seeing a dramatic increase in people using 22" and 24" or larger monitors, with resolutions of 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200 or even higher. As well as this, games and graphic applications are also becaming more and more intensive. This have prompted manufacturers to produce graphic cards with larger amounts of memory onboard, and now we are seeing more and more cards with 1Gb of DDR3 memory onboard. So does a graphic card with a larger amount of onboard ram perform any better than similar cards with less ram? This is one of the questions many people still argue about. And to be honest, I've tested a few cards with 1Gb of ram onboard ... and I still haven't found any REAL performance difference. However, according to some reports, many users have experienced a small gain in performance, while running games and graphic intensive applications at really high resolutions.
Last time, we looked at MSI's N9600GT - OC edition, which comes with 512Mb GDDR3 ram and a custom VGA cooler. It was a good performer which competed very well against other Geforce 9600GT and 8800GT cards on the market.
In this review we'll be taking a look at the MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer with 1Gb of GDDR3 ram onboard. The card is aimed at the mainstream gamer who's after silence and occaisonal high resolution gaming. It uses a slightly overclocked Geforce 9600GT (G94) GPU, which runs at 700Mhz (default is 650Mhz), and features 1Gb of DDR3 ram at the default speed of 900Mhz (1.8Ghz). To cool this overclocked card, MSI includes a custom heatpipe VGA cooler which features their Hybrid Freezer technology, and looks pretty impressive.
What makes this card different from the rest, is that it offers total silent operation during Windows. And if the heatsink unit gets hot enough, the fan will automatically spin to help reduce the temperature. The Hybrid Freezer technology isn't something new ... as far as I'm aware, it's be implemented before, but it's the first time we've seen it working on a graphics card. We're expecting the MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer 1Gb DDR3 to perform just as well as any other Geforce 9600GT based cards. The extra 1Gb of DDR3 ram onboard should help with high resolution gaming, and should be more than enough for most graphic intensive applications.
We'll be testing the MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer 1Gb DDR3 with several GPU intensive DX10 games ... with both 4xAA and 16xAF options enabled, as well as the usual 3DMark 2005, 2006 and Vantage tests. Our test rig comprises of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ default 2.4Ghz, Gigabyte GA-X48 DQ6 motherboard, OCZ Flex 2 PC2-9200 4Gb Kit, PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 860W PSU and a 24" Samsung SyncMaster 245B LCD monitor. All-in-all, it's a decently spec'd system for DX10 gaming. OK, lets not waste any more time and see how well the MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer 1Gb DDR3 will compete against other Geforce cards ...
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