It would be easy to position this card prior to testing simply because of the clockspeed which places this card between MSI's closest competitors. There is however more to this card than initially meets the eye.

Firstly, the Twin Frozr V, while not a radical change, is both very quiet and as our tests showed, and very cool - two things you want from the graphics card heatsink assembly. It beat the competition, topping the charts in this category so should rightly be applauded. It also looks the business too; The red and black theme, although beginning to show its age, still looks very good and is a very popular choice with enthusiasts. We would however like to see a change in the future as MSI are a brand which sets new trends. In the past we've known MSI to be an innovator in this field so hopefully future incarnations will hold to these values.

Performance wise, while overclocked from the factory the 4G Gaming is an 'also ran'. It neither breaks any records nor sets the world alight which we come to appreciate from an NVIDIA GTX 970. What we didn’t expect was getting such a superb overclock on both memory and core, hitting a magnificent boost core clockspeed of 1500MHz. This wasn't simply a benchable overclock, it was 100% reliable throughout the games tested, along with a 15 minute burn-in using Furmark where temperatures didn't get high enough to fry an egg. This is a good thing in case you were wondering (unless of course you are an affection ado of fried eggs - if that is the case we suggest you buy a reference AMD 290X!



Like the reference clockspeeds, the price of the card sits between both ASUS and GIGABYTE examples which also means it is more expensive than the slightly faster R9-290X, if somewhat quieter and more power efficient. Which card you choose will most likely come down to brand loyalty which we stated in the introduction of this review as each card has it's positives and negatives but in truth there isn't a great deal to choose between them. Were it our choice then we would make use of the MSI if nothing else because it was the coolest and quietest card on test as performance differences will likely be undetectable. Like the other GTX 970s, the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G attains our Silver award. It's a magnificent card that comes thoroughly recommended.

To summarise:
Cool, quiet and an excellent overclocker. The MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G is a great product that is worthy of consideration.