T’is the season for celebrations and festivities, but for gamers it will also, hopefully, open-up some additional time for gaming and present opportunities for upgrading your gaming rig. The first component most gamers will look to upgrade is the graphics card, but this can present a bewildering world of choice for hardware aficionados and novices alike. The good news is that MSI has you covered and offers various ranges to suit every budget and priority. Plus, if you get in quick, you can enter MSI’s competition and win an ultimate gaming bundle. Here’s what you need to know.
Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs
All of MSI’s ranges embrace Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs with their amazing ‘Ampere’ architecture, which ensures that games look realistic and immersive and that they run smoothly and without lag. Its key features include:
Realistic and immersive graphics with 2nd-Gen ray tracing
A core enabler of the latest graphics quality is Nvidia’s second-gen RT (ray-tracing) cores. These are what make games look near-lifelike by calculating how light – from every source and reflective surface – affects an object’s appearance. But, the computations are incredibly complex and they’re constantly changing. For on-the-fly, RT processing to function, it requires dedicated technology and the 30-series’ second-gen RT cores up the ante over the original tech by doubling the data throughput!
AI-accelerated performance with Nvidia’s DLSS
Nvidia’s 30-series graphics cards also support Deep Learning Super Sampling. This popular technology identifies when a scene’s complexity may impact performance and downscales elements within it for easier processing. It then uses Artificial Intelligence to re-scale everything back up to maintain high-resolution details while significantly boosting framerates!
Experience the lowest system latency with Nvidia Reflex
When you move, view and click in competitive games, any form of input lag can mean the difference between in-game life and death – no matter how small. To banish all latency from gaming, Nvidia introduced a revolutionary set of technologies that feature on its GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards. Collectively called Nvidia Reflex, they ensure that every touch-point from the GPU, G-Sync, keyboard, mouse and software is optimised to the point where latency can be reduced by up to 80 percent, depending on your set-up.
Built for live streaming with Nvidia Encoder
Nvenc is the name for Nvidia’s special encoder technology which is designed to both enhance regular video encoding workloads and ensure that live-streaming can be off-loaded to a dedicated part of the GPU that doesn’t interfere with performance. It features on all Nvidia’s 30-series GPUs.
Which card should you choose?
Not all Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards are created equal. Some are designed to eke out every drop of performance through cutting-edge electrical enhancements and cooling technology, but this will be overkill for some people. Other ranges seek to provide the best all-round gamer experience without breaking the bank, while others represent more wallet-friendly choices that provide all the performance you need without any unnecessary bells and whistles.
Whatever your situation, MSI’s GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards have you covered – particularly across the following three, key ranges.
MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Suprim X 8G
Its ‘Tri Frozr 2S’ cooling technology looks cool and stays cool. It features three fans that utilise MSI’s exclusive ‘Torx Fan 4.0’ design which links pairs of blades in a revolutionary ring design to increase air pressure and better focus it onto the heatsink. The whole system even covers the memory modules to help stability when pushing limits.
The heatsink itself represents some serious engineering. Heat from the GPU is directly captured by a nickel-plated copper baseplate before being rapidly drawn away by an array precision-machined core pipes that run through the heatsink itself – maintaining maximum contact and ensuring that the entire surface area is used to cool the chips as efficiently as possible.
The improved thermal management means that the Suprim cards can effortlessly run in total silence – called Zero Frozr mode – thanks to the passive cooling that’s so efficient the fans needn’t spin up. When they do, special deflectors further-enhance airflow dynamics to simultaneously improve acoustics and thermal dissipation.
The heatsink’s fins also use MSI’s bespoke ‘Wave-curved 2.0’ fin edges which essentially ‘tune’ the card to be as silent as possible when working flat-out. The fans themselves make use of dual ball-bearings for better performance, reliability, longevity and quietness. Even the rigid backplate enhances thermal performance – not just the aesthetics – with its brushed-metal exterior and multiple internal heat-pads.
Those who want to push the Suprim to its absolute limits will like the dual-Bios that switches from Gaming to Silent mode and gain peace of mind from MSI’s addition of extra fuses to protect the chips from electrical damage.
Naturally, with great feats of engineering come great requirements to physically support everything and MSI’s Suprim cards excel in this area: an extra copper layer is added to the card’s PCB for enhanced performance and solidity; there’s a bespoke, rigid-metal, anti-bending strap to keep the card straight; there’s even a special Suprim support stand to prevent any potential sagging.
In addition to the hardware, MSI’s popular Afterburner software keeps overclocking simple while MSI Center lets you easily set performance profiles and manage the RGB Mystic Lighting details. MSI’s Suprim cards come in both stock-clock and factory-overclocked ‘X’ variants.
MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X 12G
If gaming is life, but ultimate performance is overkill, then the popular GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X 12G should be on your shortlist. There’s a generous 12GB of GDDR6 RAM to keep pace with top AAA-titles. It features all of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series enhancement technologies and much of MSI’s best cooling tech, too. Indeed, the twin fans also utilise Torx Fan 4.0, the precision-machined core pipes are present and so are the all the silent-running features to the point where it too can run in Zero Frozr, silent mode. Naturally, everything works with MSI’s tweaking and management software and it looks good without even mentioning the RGB Mystic Light detailing. It’s a powerful beast and it won’t break the bank.
MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Ventus 3X 8G OC
If you thought saving money came with compromises, think again. MSI’s Ventus range of GeForce RTX 30-series cards also utilises all of the above Nvidia technology. On the 3070 Ti card, MSI uses three fans with Torx Fan 3.0 technology and these, in conjunction with precision-machined core pipes, also make it capable of Zero Frozr silent running. It too features a thermal-optimised backplate, anti-bending technology and support bracket plus, all of MSI’s software enhancement features are available. It’s the perfect choice for no-nonsense gamers on a budget.
Win an ultimate gaming bundle worth $2,000!
Whichever graphics card you plump for, don’t miss out on MSI’s competition which offers purchasers of its RTX GeForce 30-series graphics cards the opportunity to win an Ultimate Gaming Bundle. Just click here for details!
