Features

While MSI already launched their R7850 graphics card a few months back, there’s nothing like a new refresh with added features to entice customers for an upgrade. Today I’ll be looking at the MSI R7850 Power Edition graphics card.

The new ‘Power Edition’ brings a good number of features with it. First and foremost is the new Twin Frozr IV heatsink, which until now was featured only on the R7970 card from MSI. The other thing you’ll notice is how impressively small the R7850 Power Edition is, measuring just 8.5-inches; less than the width of a standard ATX motherboard.

Design

The custom PCB which measures 8-inches uses MSI’s top end Military Class III components, known to be used in their high-end motherboards and graphics cards. Coming back to the heatsink, we see aluminum fins that sit directly on top of the GPU and memory modules, with three heatpipes expanding outside.

The heatsink is covered by two 80mm fans that push air down to cool the components. The whole area is then covered by a cool black, metal casing on top. It’s interesting to note that MSI have used complete metal components as much as possible, and except for the fans, nothing on the heatsink is plastic.

Interestingly the two fans on the Twin Frozr IV heatsink adopt the same ‘Dust Removal’ technology that debuted for the first time in the MSI GTX 580 Extreme Lightning Edition. What basically happens here is that during the first 30 seconds of startup, the fans will run in reverse direction which should help pull off dust particles stuck in the heatsink fins.

The defining factor of the R7850 Power Edition comes from the improved PWM design which allows for massive power efficiencies, which further allows you to control voltage settings for GPU, memory and VDDCI. Of course, what all this, the improved heatsink and PWM, translates into is simply better overclocking. You should be able to take the R7850 Power Edition to the limits.

Features

The Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD which was reviewed last year was one of the first SATA III SSDs to use the latest SandForce SF-2281 controller, and it turned out to perform so well that to this day we use it as part of our testbed.

While the regular HyperX 240GB, like most other SSDs in this category, is rather expensive, Kingston launched a budget version of the same drive, the HyperX 3K.

Basically the HyperX 3K is the exact same as the regular HyperX enthusiast SSD, with one component change. Instead of using Intel’s 25nm NAND Flash that’s rated for 5K P/E cycles that’s used in the regular HyperX, the HyperX 3K uses Intel’s 25nm NAND Flash rated at 3K P/E cycles. That, and the color for the 3K version is black instead of blue.

So what does the 3K program/erase cycle mean? For that let’s have a very quick look at how solid state drives work. Every time information is stored on SSDs, every cell within the NAND Flash deteriorates as data is programmed on it. Over time this results in the cells holding no charge at all, resulting in your SSD being unusable. However, this process of wear and tear takes years, multiple decades in most cases, by which time you will have moved on other (presumably better) storage media.

In the long run (of our lifetime) all data storage is temporary; we just move our important documents and beloved media from one place to another. Right now solid state drives just presents us with an incredibly fast way to access data, something we need on a daily basis as our lives get busier.

However, not everyone wants, or can afford, to pay for the privilege of high speed data access, and so we have the 3K P/E NAND Flash from Intel that’s being used in the HyperX 3K drive. Assuming you’re writing and erasing 10GB data every day, the 3K program/erase cycle will result in a rough lifespan of over 20 years.

So with that out of the way, let’s have a look at how the HyperX 3K performs compared to its peers that use 5K P/E NAND.

Benchmarks

For testing the Kingston HyperX 3K SSD, the below testbed was used:

Note: To further stress the SF-2281 controller and see how good TRIM support is, I have copied all the contents from our original testbed SSD, which contains Windows 7 and all the games and benchmarks and tests used for various review, in addition to some more games that were installed. This gave a nice spread of data, both compressed and uncompressed. Out of 223GB of available space, 56% of the drive was filled up. The below benchmarks show results with both empty and (near) half full performance.

Speeds

I have used ATTO Disk Benchmark to get the sequential read and write speeds, Crystal Diskmark for 4K speeds and HD Tach for burst speeds.

PCMark 7

The PCMark 7 Storage benchmarks are some of the most stressing tests designed for modern hard drives and solid state drives. There are a number of tests performed, focusing on different aspects of the drive and eventually churn out a score based on the overall performance of the drive. Below I have shown the total PCMark 7 storage score for multiple hard drives and SSDs.

AS SSD

In this case I have used AS SSD, which utilizes read and write speeds based on uncompressed data. After filling up 56% of the drive, it here where we can see a tangible difference in sequential read and write speeds.

Conclusion

The Kingston HyperX 3K without a doubt performs exceptionally well. The relatively low-life NAND Flash doesn’t hurt the performance in the least. In fact, not only is it able to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the best SSDs in the market, but the performance is admirable even with the drive over 50% full.

Apparently the 3K P/E lifespan hardly affects daily performance, nor will it for many years. Furthermore with improved firmware which increases the efficiency of read/write operations, additionally TRIM support reliability increases even more. What more proof than the fact that to date we have not had any problem with our Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD despite multiple motherboard and other component changes.

If you’re in the market for an SSD, Kingston’s drives are certainly one of the best SandForce controlled drives out there. Performance is as high as any SATA III SSD can hope to achieve, and the 3 year warranty from Kingston certainly adds another layer of reassurance. So for overall performance and price, the Kingston HyperX 3K is one of the best SSDs to be had in the market right now.

Nvidia’s GTX 680 launched 2 months back with much hype, and not only did it live up to the expectations, but also set a new benchmark on how much performance can be squeezed out with such little power.

GTX 680 DNA

What Nvidia has built is a slightly detuned version of the fastest single GPU based graphics card in the world. Looking at the spec sheet below we see a small reduction in the CUDA Cores and core clock speeds, but pretty much everything else remains the same.

We have the same 28nm GK104 chip inside as the GTX 680, the same four 64-bit memory controllers, giving the 2GB GDDR5 memory 256-bit bandwidth and the same number of transistors. Coming in at 9.5-inches, the GTX 670 requires a 500W PSU powered with two 6-pin connectors.

Interestingly the power supply was moved towards the left side, rather than the complete right side as is usually the case. The fan, which is the same one used in the GTX 680, is thus moved to the right end. Sucking in the air, the hot air is then blown out through the left side of the GTX 670, i.e. outside the case. Nvidia have said that thanks to the power efficiencies of the Kepler architecture and the high overclockability of the GTX 670, which partners can make cars with customized heatsinks and much higher clock speeds. Let’s take a look at one such example. Temperatures remained at a fairly middle of the road 37°C when idle, and going up to 76°C under load.

Zotac GTX 670 AMP! Edition

If we take a look at the new Zotac GTX 670 AMP! Edition, we see some major improvements in the cooling solution. First off this is the exact same heatsink we have seen being used in the recently reviewed Zotac GTX 680 AMP! Edition. Measuring 10.5-inches, the GTX 670 AMP! Edition is also cooled by the massive heatsink, with the large copper pipes extending outwards and two big 80mm fans as the GTX 680 AMP! Edition.

Basically what this has allowed Zotac to do is to overclock the card to 1098MHz core clock (boosting to 1176MHz) and 3304 MHZ (6608MHz effective) memory speeds. That’s an overclock of 20% on the core clock and 10% memory speeds. That’s quite an incredible bump in speed over there. The best part, however, was that the temperature remained at 29°C when idling and touching just 60°C under load!