MSI Radeon HD 6950 DirectX 11 R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

Pros: Looks like I am reviewing this first, lol.... Great looking card, MUCH quieter than reference card at full load. Efficient Twin Frozr lll cooler. Two fan speed settings, silent and performance, performance is a little louder but still quieter than stock card BUT 20C cooler. I will spend weekend playing around with settings and post a second review. This card is certainly niche as it is around $40 more than reference 2gb 6950, for me it's a no brainer, I want quiet gaming, so I would be looking to replace stock AMD cooler and currently Arctic Cooling have cooler at $75, waterblocks are over $100, this card comes with nice overclock on core AND memory so IMO worth the extra $40, I could pay $20 more for a reference 6970 which again is loud and only 10% faster. Once overclocked this 6950 should be just as fast as stock clocked 6970, just quieter and cooler. I will add a second next month for CF Eyefinity :-) Look out for second review. Newegg rocks ordered yesterday arrived today...

Cons: More expensive than stock 6950 and not far off reference 6970 prices. No dual bios and no ability to unlock to 6970. Caveat- I am far to experienced a user to believe that long term flashing of a 6950 to 6970 is a good idea, after all they are both using different memory chips and voltages, so not being able to flash is in my opinion a good thing. Having said this the core is the same, just binned for performance so use of bios editor to unlock the extra shaders without changing memory timings or voltages is more sensible approach imo. However I really see no real value in doing this as best case scenario at 1920x1200 with just the extra shaders enabled (no core or memory oc) I have seen 2fps difference in BF2 BC when reviewing and downclocking stock 6970 to 6950 speeds.... If you are determined to flash bios, I wish you good luck, buy a cheaper reference 6950...

Overall Review: I have purchased so many video cards over the last year, some for me and some for my customers. My last purchase was an EVGA 560TI and this was silent. This time I am upgrading to Eyefinity, so a single Nvidia card was not an option, also 1gb vram was not going to help, so I looked to AMD for single card Eyefinity and 2gb of vram. This is the third MSI card that I have purchased that has the Twin Frozr cooler, I had a pair of 5770's and 460 Hawks with Twin Frozr ll coolers, these were surprisingly loud and distracting so I was a little concerned about this version lll, however initial thoughts are extremely positive, this card is indeed quiet when the silent setting is chosen. As for performance it is a 6950, I have not attempted to overclock it, but Afterburner does support voltage increase and I have no doubt that I will be able to hit 900+ on the core. As for flashing see comments above.

Pros: Easy to flash right out of the box, quiet. See cons:

Cons: So I didn't see a guide looking through the comments, here is how I did it: Things you need: GPU-Z (To check to make sure the flashing worked) ATIflash (The tool that allows you to flash your BIOS) The Modified BIOS (There is one out there specifically for this card) 1. Shutdown, set the BIOS switch on the card to position "1" (This is the position farthest from the back of your case, and I do not know if this is necessary for this card). 2. Restart, open ATIflash and click "Save", so that you have a backup of your original BIOS in case something happens. 3. Click "Load Image", browse to the modified BIOS, then click "Program" to begin the flashing. 4. Wait for it to complete, then restart when prompted. 5. Load into GPU-Z, under "Shaders" you should see that you have 1536 (a normal card has 1408). This also unlocks the ability to have higher OCs.

Overall Review: If something goes wrong: switch the switch back to original position, go into ATIflash and load the original BIOS. Right before you click "Program", switch the switch to position "1". Please note: this is how I successfully flash my card, and I make no promises that it will work/not brick your card/not void your warranty, do it at your own risk!

Pros: Overall it is a very nice fast card with solid cooling after I worked on it. I actually like the PCI-E power connector locations as they are not directly in the airpath.

Cons: The big issue was that I had to work on the card. I had noticed rather hot temperatures both at idle and while under load. The fan had to maintain 75% fan speed to maintain a rather high processor temp. My initial attempts to reach MSI customer support went nowhere and I finally emailed one of the MSI customer support staff mentioned in MSI manufacturer responses here on NewEgg, he set up a call time with support. After some discussion support told me I could either RMA the card or reseat the heatsink to see if it fixed the problem. After being assured I would not void the warranty in reseating the heatsink I chose that route and it did fix the card. The card is very heavy (and it almost seems like the weight is part of the reason why the heatsink was not seated properly on the processor.

Overall Review: I had originally purchased this card with the intent of purchasing another in the near future to run two cards. At this point I am aprehensive buying one of the more expensive 6950's on the market when it may require some assembly.

Pros: Great card! Came from a Saphire 4870x2 and this is a much better card. The 4870x2 decided to to boot anymore which is why I moved to this. No problems playing MW3 - very rarely drop below 100fps with all settings maxed out. It averages around 120fps in MW3 MP. The minute I got it I flashed the new bios and it went without issue. Use the two links in "Other thoughts" to flash. Have the card OC to 880GPU and 1375MEM - stable as can be. Ran Furmark for an hour on the 1080 preset with no issues. Fit well in an Antec 300 case - tight, but it fits well. Have 3 120mm fans and 2 140mm fans all on their lowest setting and this card idles around 45C and has maxed out at 61C during stress testing. Card usually sits at 57C when gaming - huge improvement from the 4870x2. Card is nearly silent next to my case fans. Noise is not an issue at all with this card. Under full load the fans don't spin up over 50%.

Cons: The card is a bit more expensive than I wanted to pay. However, it's $50 cheaper than a 6970 and you get 6970 specs after the OC and BIOS update.

Overall Review: Below are the links for the BIOS update. I got them from another commenter here so I can't take credit for finding them. Followed them to the "T" and it worked wonderfully. Took no more than 5 minutes. Highly recommended! I downloaded the bios for this at : http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/msi_r6950_twin_froz_iii_power_edition_unlocking,1.html I used instructions from: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/159 Follow the instructions and use the bios from the first link..... Very Very simple.

Pros: As of 9/9/2011, they unlock again. In other words, this is a 6970 after a few minutes of easy work. Mine overclocks to 900/1400 while unlocked without any issue whatsoever. It is also very quiet. Much, much quieter than the GTX 470 it replaced.

Cons: It is big, but if you should know that. Fits just fine in a full tower, but would be a tight squeeze in some mid towers.

Overall Review: Make sure you get the correct bios for this card. MSI came out with their own bios to unlock this since it isn't based on the reference PCB. A quick search of google will yield what you are looking for. I used that one and I had this card unlocked in a matter of minutes. Do not be afraid of the idea of a firmware upgrade. You really only have to type one line of code the entire time and the unlocking instructions you can find on google will tell you exactly what to type.

Pros: No fuss, works as advertised. Fans are quiet unless you purposely run them at 100% Since this has the dual-bios, I was able to update the BIOS to enable the number of shaders present in a 6970. I'm running mine at 900MHZ Core clock and left the memory at the stock 1300MHZ.

Cons: none so far.. except this isn't really a con. Have not yet been able to unlock the clocks.. more trying to come!

Pros: Overclocks like a champ. I haven't pushed mine too hard yet but got to 920 core no problem. Cooler is hands down the best I've seen come with a card. When overclocked the gpu temp hits 65c in furmark. Never goes over 60 in games for me. This is with ~22-23c ambient room temp. I have also never heard this card over my (admittedly somewhat loud) case fans.

Cons: Price approaches 6970 territory but so does performance.

Overall Review: Mine did not unlock. You can just OC more to make up the difference really. If you want 6970 performance, this card will get you there and possibly further with or without unlocking.

Pros: Fantastic card!

Cons: Had to do a fresh install of windows 7 for drivers to take.

Overall Review: I wanted to correct my previous statement of this card not being a good overclocker once unlocked. I was unfamiliar with Afterburner, and didn't know I had to click on "constant voltage" under the settings. Once this was done, a very nice OC was possible :)