Question 1

I'm curious if this specific card comes with power cables etc? It doesnt show any in the screenshots.

Accepted Answer

No cables are included. I've never purchased a graphics card that included cables, so I think that would never be a standard part of any card purchase. You would need a modular power supply to even use extra cables.

Question 2

There is a lot or reports about loud coil whine coming from various GTX 970 models, including the more overclocked MSI gaming twin frozr model. Is the cause of this coil whine known? I haven't heard many reports about coil whine on this particular model. Does this model do anything in particular to prevent this whine? Has anyone who has purchased this MSI GTX 970 4GD5T OC model experienced any coil whine?

Accepted Answer

I haven't heard any coil whine when I've played my most graphically intensive games or when I've benchmarked the card. However, if the framerate gets into the thousands, like on some intro videos (Titanfall is the most recent game that I've played that has coil whine in the intro videos), I do hear some faint coil whine.

Question 3

hello i was wondering if this card can run games such as dayz, arma 3, titanfall, battlefield 4, hardline, etc.?

Accepted Answer

Pretty easily with graphic settings on Ultra at 1080p. Now at 1440, you will be in the upper part of the usual required specs for those games but may have to lower or disable AA and/or shadows. The issue is at 4k because your going to have lower you settings drastically and play at 30fps or less. Thats due to both 4k being so demanding and the 970s unsual 3.5gb+500mb video RAM configuration causing micro-studder at that resolution. Hope that helps

Question 4

What is a recommended PSU wattage for this card?  I use NewEgg's calculator and it says 880W.  Put in my current GPU and system info and it says 444W.  I look at the max wattage this will use and it says 148W for the card on another site.  
One 10k rpm hdd.  One ssd.  One blu ray.  4x 4GB ram. 95W CPU. High end mother board.

Accepted Answer

Minimum power requirement from Nvidia for the GTX 970 is 500 watts. MSI states that it is 20% more efficient BUT, you're looking at a MINIMUM, maximum would be higher. I'm running a Corsair AX1200 PSU and am running 2 MSI GTX 970s, 2 blu-ray burners, (4) 1TB HDDs, a Corsair H100, and  8 case fans comfortably.

Question 5

I have an Antec 900 Computer Case, Mid Tower. The previous card I owned was the MSI Twin Frozer 660ti (for reference). I have heard reports about how large this card in particular is, and am wondering if it will fit in a mid sized case?

- Wolfgang

Accepted Answer

Per nVidia's specifications.

660ti
9.5 inches Length
4.376 inches Height

gtx 970
4.376 inches Height
10.5 inches Length

Should be fine unless youre REALLLLLYYYY tight on space.

Question 6

A much more serious question this time:

There have been many of reports of compatibility issues with the gtx 900 series cards, involving blank screens after initial boot at the windows loading screen, after waking the pc from sleep mode, in bios, games crashing, and even blank screens during low computer activity such as light web browsing. This problem has been addressed by nvidia, however they still have not entirely fixed the problem as far as I know, there are still people struggling with these issues today.

This is causing me serious concern, and is the only thing holding me back from purchasing this card, as it comes in a bundle and is non refundable. I wouldn't want to order this card to find out i can't get it to run, and then not be able to refund it due to the nvidia game bundle.

To anyone who has bought this card:
 Have you encountered this problem else of black/blank screens after loading windows at boot and such? What is your build of components?

Accepted Answer

I have this card and have place multiple reviews, some bad when I was in a poor mood. I have experience all the symptoms you were talking about and I have one thing to say.... It was my fault, previous msi amd cards I had owned I OC'd with MSI afterburner and the cards never let me clock them past a certain point. This card is already OC'd and MSI afterburner let me turn up the clock a lot higher than before, being new to the overclocking scene i just assumed that meant I could go higher. I now know that I had simply overclocked to high and had an unstable clock. This card is great bang for your buck and I am waiting for fedex to deliver me my second one this week so I can SLI past the performance of the GTX Titan.

Question 7

Does this card have a back plate and if no is there one available for it ?

Accepted Answer

I was wondering the same thing, there is a company I found after digging around that makes custom back plates letting you pick designs, colors, and materials. Newegg does not let me reference other companies in my answer so just google "msi gtx 970 dragon backplate" It will be in the top results. There are many others who offer custom backplates, just google and look around on forums.

Question 8

What is the difference between this card and the other msi gtx 970?

Accepted Answer

Truthfully, there isn't much, other than what they've said in the previous comments, it's built for mITX builds, so then you can get raw power, but keep it small.

Question 9

It says SLI but will i need another part in order to make it compatible with the same type of card or would i just connect it to motherboard like if i had 1 card?

Accepted Answer

Most motherboards (mobo) that support SLI with come with a flex SLI cable, if yours did not but does support it you can always buy the cable online. And YES you will need the SLI cable to link the cards.

Question 10

My motherboard has PCI EXPRESS 2.0. Is it still possible to run this card? I plan on upgrading all my components in near future but i wanted to get this card first.

Accepted Answer

Yes, this card will work great in a PCI EXPRESS 2.0 slot running with all 16 lanes. Almost no difference with one card in 3.0 compared to 2.0 with using all 16 lanes. I have this card with a Z68 motherboard running a Core i5 2500k at 4.2Ghz at 2.0x16. Makes sure the MSI GTX 970 has the latest BIOS 84.04.2F.00.50. I run the MSI GTX 970 at 110% power with Core running at ~1420MHz and Memory running at 7000MHz using Afterburner.

Questions & Answers