MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr OC - Overclocking

While a 4 per cent core overclock is welcome, the hugely improved cooler and power delivery circuitry makes the Twin Frozr OC a prime candidate for some high-level overclocking. Happily MSI’s Afterburner software is one of the best when it comes to extracting extra MHz from your GPU, so we set about pushing the Twin Frozr OC to its limits.

We were surprised though, to find out just how high those limits were. The GPU Boost base clock easily passed 1,100MHz, finally hitting stability issues at a whopping 1,175MHz; while it would load into games and boost to a mighty frequency of 1.3GHz, it wasn’t stable enough for 24/7 use, even with the extra 12mV afforded by overvolting. Instead we dialled the base frequency back to 1,170MHz, with the GPU boosting constantly to 1,293MHz under load. This is a tasty 20 per cent improvement over a stock GTX 760 2GB and 14 per cent increase over the card’s factory clocks.


The memory also proved incredibly open to overclocking, going way beyond the 6GHz effective stock frequency. 7GHz was easily surpassed with us eventually settling on a stable memory frequency of 1,902MHz (7.6GHz effective). This huge 27 per cent increase boosted the card’s memory bandwidth from 192GB/sec to 243GB/sec, and is frankly an outrageous degree of overclocking headroom for any graphics card, let alone a £220 model.

What’s more, the Twin Frozr cooler barely registered the overclock, despite system power rising by 25W to 311W. The GPU temperature did rise slightly to a delta T of 43°C, but the cooling fans remained very quiet, spinning at just 1,140RPM. This excellent cooling meant that the Twin Frozr OC’s boosted constantly to its 1,293MHz maximum boost clock, under a variety of circumstances, without becoming noisy or intrusive, something that certainly can’t be said for cards equipped with the stock cooler.

Overall the Twin Frozr OC’s overclocking package is simply epic; intuitive software, awesome, low-noise cooling and the overclocking headroom to push the card 20 per cent faster.

We almost couldn't believe the card could run such high clocks stable, but after 24 hours of stress testing we were left pleasantly surprised as it continued to chew through benchmarks at its maximum frequencies without breaking a sweat.

The minimum frame rate in BF3 at 2,560 x 1,600 with 4x AA rose 17 per cent to 41fps, easily surpassing the GTX 670’s 36fps and coming in just five per cent slower than the GTX 770 2GB. Crysis 3 saw a similarly impressive increase at 1,920 x 1,080, as the minimum frame rate shot up from 40fps to 47fps, just 1fps behind the GTX 770 2GB. If those frame rates gains aren’t enough, a score of 1,774 points in Unigine’s Valley benchmark is a 15 per cent improvement and, amazingly, actually marginally faster than a GTX 680 2GB.