MSI R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: Great overclocking, and runs cool. I can't really complain, running 1100/1500 stock volts, during benching it barely gets to 70c. I've not changed thermal compound or edited fan profile. It just works out of box great.

Cons: As of it none besides low gpu usage in some games, not sure if drivers or not. Assume oc'd 4.2 i5 3570k is fast enough to run it max usage lol. So far tho nothing really to complain about.

Other Thoughts: I want another for xfire, bout all that comes to mind.

Pros: Great bang for buck card. Can overclock easily. I received the 7970 PCB version so even more overclock ability.

I used the card for my mining rig, and I could not have made a better choice. Getting about 650 mh/s with maximum overclock and it runs only at about 75 degrees Celsius. Will be adding 4 more of these.

Cons: I was so excited when I received my card. I had hoped that all of the thermal paste issues were not going to happen with my card, but the second it hit full load on stock it crashed. So I took of the heatsink to clean it out and apply my own and it was way worse than I thought. The thermal paste was all over the PCB.

It took me about 45 minutes to clean it all out, that is how bad it was. I applied my own thermal paste and it was up and running with no more crashing on full load.

Other Thoughts: MSI please stop trying to kill this amazing card. Just apply less Thermal Paste, it will save you guys money, and save us a headache.

Pros: Mine is a early revision with 6 pin and 8 pin power, unlocked voltage is good, very solid overclocker with no voltage bump at all. its fast getting 1848 on extreme HD unigine valley benchmark. very solid heat sink and shrout.

Cons: fans are very high pitched thus making them loud, its louder than my dirt 3 edition 6950 was by a lot.

Now the thermal paste... its not so much that its bad quality paste its that mine had an absurd amount on it. Literally it looked like they let a little kid just squeeze paste from an elmers glue tubs all over it i mean huge chunks fell off the chip and heatsink when i removed it. With that stock terrible thermal paste application my card was idling at 60c !! after cleaning it up and putting some antec formula 7 on it now idles around 42-45c and peaks under full load about 65c which is completely normal and acceptable in my book.

Other Thoughts: i say first thing you do with one of these is re-apply thermal paste and dont look back its a great card.

Pros: This card comes out of the box with a boost clock of 960 MHZ. It is the v2 of the card with an additional 25W of power available with an 8 pin, pin setup like the 7970. I have had stable clocks of 1250MHZ/1500 memory with unofficial/unsupported afterburner. With this setup tho, the powertune doesnt work very well, it tears on 2d because the core doesnt clock down in unsupported mode. Stock afterburner settings will allow 1100 on the core, stable with little voltage and no issues. 3Dmark scores are on par with 7970 GHZ edition and sometimes better. Its more than enough to provide 80-90 FPS on BF3 @ 1080i on ultra settings. I plan on an eyefinity 3 monitor setup in the future and it should have enough to drive all 3 at ultra settings and still have playable FPS. This card is simply awesome! MSI has some of the most overclockable and bullet-proof cards on the market.

Cons: Puts out some heat when OC'ed. Temps still well under reference but it heats up components around it, 72C under full load for an hour- MB temps climb to 48C (thats at 1100MHZ/1500 Mem) Not really a con, but add a side fan to blow on MB.

Other Thoughts: Great design, It would be nice if the heat from the card was pushed out the rear of the slot.

Pros: Very fast for the price. Overclocks to 1100 core 1500 memory on stock voltage and is faster than my friends gtx 670.

Cons: Slower than a 670 stock, but both overclocked to max the 7950 is faster. A cheaper 7950 would probably overclock to the same speed for $30 less.

Other Thoughts: Love the 7950 and its very fast. Here is a 3dmark 11 score: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6526595

Pros: -Demolishes any game I can throw at it in Ultra settings, BF3, Arma 3 Alpha... except for Crysis 3, which can only run in High.
-Easy and effortless overclocking due to AMD's software.

Cons: -Louder than a tornado breaking the sound barrier on medium-high load
-Spikes to very high temps on high load and full fan speed with my case side off. (90C+!)

Other Thoughts: When I first got this card, it would not register on my motherboard, I thought it was DOA, but when I tried taking my MOBO out of my case and inserting the card, then it decided to work. Had to insert a few raisers under my MOBO, and everything worked fine after that.

Purchased two of these for my gaming rig, except for the noise they make and the random temperature spikes, I really can't say that they weren't worth my money in the long run. I just hope they don't die soon, I'd hate to have to sell my soul to get the amount of money needed to purchase two more.

Pros: Ran quit and cool for almost a month.

Cons: Died within a month. No warning signs or overheating. Just shutdown. Couldn't boot the PC until I replaced the card.

Pros: this thing stays very cool while pushing the most demanding games above 60fps. the heatsinks and copper pipes look very stylish and function great.

Cons: I sometimes get graphical artifacting on game's splash screens. This hasn't occured during gameplay as of yet. This happens in tomb raider(2013) and crysis 3. I'm not sure whether this is a driver issue or maybe my card has something physically wrong with it.

Other Thoughts: my system specs:
mobo: Asus 990fx Sabertooth
cpu: AMD 8150 Black Edition
cpu cooler: H100 Corsair
ram: 16GB Gskill Ripjaws
psu: TX650W corsair
case: Corsair 500R

Pros: Looks really nice. Glad they went with a dark (brown) PCB.

Cons: Fans are horribly loud, even without OC.
OCed a little, but would usually crash.
Artifacts and high levels of tearing (on Metro 2033) on base clocks and OCed clocks.
Runs Hot. Goes to 74C.

Other Thoughts: This has been my 2nd MSI TFIII and it has been defective.
I'm done with MDI cards. I read so much praise about this card and had high hopes, but disappointed me TWICE.
Used this on a 1080p monitor.
ASIC Quality for those who want to know: 58.2%

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

We apologize for the issues that you are having with this product.

Please kindly visit the URL below to set up a RMA with the following information.
http://service.msicomputer.com/msi_user/rma_form_new.aspx

1. Full name (first, and last)
2. Telephone #
3. Physical address
4. Email address
5. Serial number (located on the box, or the back of VGA card, eg 602-xxxx-xxxBxxxxxxxxxx)
6. Symptoms you are having onto the Special Remark section (as detailed as possible)

Once your information and warranty coverage are verified then we can proceed with this RMA for you.
Our turn-around time is typically two weeks and our system will notify you automatically at every stage of your RMA process.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the product, received the unit back from RMA but are still having issues, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at usreview@msi.com and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com

Pros: I am very happy with this card now that I have fixed the obvious thermal past issue (Thanks Johnnyles) idol temp is now 40c with Max temp of approx 80c under load. I like the build quality of the card, I have the older model with the 6 and 8 power connectors.
Now running @: Voltage @ 1.125 GPU 1050 and Mem @ 1550
It liked the 1.125v any lower and the GPU Frequency would drop under load using MSI Kombustor - nice utility to test stability when combined with afterburner.

Cons: I have read numerous reviews regarding issues with MSI's Thermal Paste. I was having the same issues as others:
Load Temps 90+C
Idol 50+C
Crashing during games (Far Cry 3 Battlefield 3) Default settings and OC'd
Blue Screens
My first thought was driver issues with AMD since my case is well ventilated with a 120mm fan blowing directly on my MSI 7950. I have tried different setups but when it blue screened on me at default clock setting I new something was up then I read Johnnyles's review and the Passive aggressive use of thermal Paste on his card :-(. I wouldn't classify mine as Passive Aggressive but more like the use of VERY LOW Quality thermal Paste. I decided to take a look at mine since the only way I could see to resolve the issue was with an RMA. I pulled the heatsink off and the thermal paste was dried to a almost grey powder substance which "FLAKED" right off when I was cleaning it from the GPU. I have seen the inexpensive "White" themal paste with better heat conducting potential then what MSI used. Cleaned heatsink and GPU and reapplied some arctic silver -credit card method, nice thin even coat- reapplied heatsink and installed into computer. Temps now at:
40c idol and between 70 to 80c under load
Far Cry 3 running good - no crashing every 5 minutes
3D Mark11 runs to completion without crashing
Much happier video card
This is a very easy check if others were looking at doing this, the heat sink is only held on by 4 little screws- just loosen them up and the heat sink will pop right off.
Since I did this I can now play Far Cry 3 with out crashing ever 5-10 minutes so it did help out a lot and dropped my temps considerably.

Other Thoughts: MSI this appears to be an Quality issue with the thermal paste you decided to use as I am not the only one with this problem. Thermal paste should not dry up and become flaky or be applied in a "Passive aggressive Manor" (Johnnyles). I hope you will read and act on these reviews as far as what people are finding in actual use and fix this problem