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| Brand Name |
MSI |
| Part Number |
N250GTS-2D1G OC |
| Graphics Chip |
G92 |
| Core clock |
760 |
| Shader Clock |
1835 |
| SPs |
128 |
| Fabrication Process |
55nm |
| Transistors |
754 Million |
| Memory clock |
2270MHz |
| Memory bus |
256-bit |
| Memory bandwidth |
124.8GB/second |
| Memory Size |
1024MB |
| ROPs |
16 |
| Texture Filtering Units |
64 |
| Texture Filtering Rate |
36GT/second |
| HDCP Support |
Yes |
| HDMI Support |
Yes (via adapter) |
| Connectors |
Dual DisplayPort, DVI, TV-Out |
| RAMDACs |
400MHz |
| Bus |
PCI Express 2.0 |
| Form Factor |
Dual Slot |
| Power Connectors |
6-pin power |
The MSI N250 card is based upon NVIDIA's G92 chip which has been used in numerous cards over the last two years starting with the GeForce 8800GT in late 2007. The chip has been shrunk down to 55 nm process when the 8800GT was at 65nm. The card has the same number of transistors; ROPs texture units and memory bus as the 9800GTX+ which was released early last year. In fact, GPUZ reports that this card was manufactured in June of 2008.
MSI differentiates their card by having higher clock speeds in all three domains Core, Shader, and memory than the NVIDIA reference card. 760MHz for the core clock is slightly higher than the 738MHz on the reference card. Also, the Shader clock of 1835Mhz is higher than the reference clock. This card has 1GB of DDR3 memory clocked at 1135 or 2270MHz effective giving the card a maximum memory bandwidth of 72.64GB/second.
DirectX 11 will be here later this year or early next year with support for Compute Shaders, Hull Shaders, Pixel Shader 5.0 and more with the release of Windows 7, the replacement for Vista. That will be the next major insertion point for graphics cards and NVIDIA will likely support it. For now, NVIDIA has stuck to DirectX 10.0 skipping DirectX 10.1 altogether. Pixel Shader 4.0, Vertex Shader 4.0, the second generation Unified Shader Architecture and 128 Stream Processors are supported on the GTS 250.
The card has specialized cooling with four 6mm heatpipes, a huge heatsink area, a low-noise fan, and award winning thermal technology. The solution is very cool running with silent operation during most tasks. MSI uses Solid Capacitors like on motherboards to prevent leakage of capacitors that get broken off. Dual CoreCell is their component status hardware monitoring utility that integrates multiple integrated circuits. Their overclocking utility is called DOT Express or Dynamic Overclocking Technology.
Card
Card side
Card vertical
Cooling fan
MSI logo
The first thing that you will notice is this is not your father's GeForce 9800GTX+ in terms of cooling. The heatsink is a black dual-slot heatsink with four heatpipes leading out from the portion of the cooler covering the graphics chip to four areas of the heatsink. The fan is a 4-fin fan which is very quiet during operation.
Bottom of cooling
Top of heatsink
Heat pipe
Capacitors
The MSI card has four 6mm heatpipes. Normal heat pipes used on video cards are 5mm, meaning that they will offer up to 20% better thermal efficiency than 5mm fans. The heatpipes are soldered to a copper base which transfers heat quickly. The third function of the heatpipes is that they are welded with fins not just go-through. There are 33 high-density aluminum fins to provide maximum heat dissipation area.
6-pin power
Fan power
SLI bridge
Rear of PCB
The card requires a 6-pin power connector to operate. MSI has situated the 6-pin power connector on the top right hand portion of the card. This allows the end-user to install the card into a case with a short distance between the video card and the HDDs without issue. The top of the card has two SLI bridges which are used to improve gaming performance when used in SLI mode using 2/3 identical cards in unison.
IO
PCI Express
The front IO of the card consists of the standard two DVI-I connections and HDTV connection found on virtually every video card of the last five years. You can run dual monitors with two HDMI (with adapters), two DVI and a combination of those plus the ability to run two VGA monitors from the same card. The rear of the card has the mounting pins for the graphics chip and the part number sticker.
Bundle
- Driver CD
- Quick User's Guide
- DVI to HDMI Adapter
- DVI to VGA/D-sub adapter
- HDMI Audio cable
- MSI N250GTS video card
- Call of Duty World at War
MSI sent the bare card with no bundle included. As this is a retail product, the bundle indicated above is of the packaging from Newegg. NVIDIA has partnered with several etailers to include Call of Duty World at War as a software bundle with many of their cards. The other components include a HDMI to DVI adapter, a DVI to D-sub adapter and a HDMI cable.
MSI bundles their video card with several utilities including MSI Live Update, Dual Core Center, GoodMem, LockBox, WMInfo, Vivid, Live, E-Color, MediaRing, ShowShift, ThinSoft Be Twin, and Norton Internet Security 60 Days Trial. GoodMem helps increase the physical memory size and monitors memory usage by the system. WMI Info is a system information utility.
NVIDIA has taken to releasing a new driver every month like ATI, which is a good thing. MSI's drivers are not very up-to-date as the latest driver on their website for the GeForce GTS 250 is 178.24 which were released last year. NVIDIA's reference drivers are up to 185.20 which were released this month. I always suggest using the latest NVIDIA drivers with your new video card.
Idle temp
Stress temp while overclocked
Idle temperatures on the card were observed to be around 36C. Considering that idle temperatures of the 9800GT were around 39C under similar ambient temperatures. Stress temperatures of about 63C were observed during running of 3DMark Vantage with HWMonitor. Overclocking the MSI card was pretty successful. Note to use CoreCell you need to use the MSI supplied driver and most people will want to use the NVIDIA Performance utility to overclock as it does the same thing. I was able to overclock the core to 850MHz without issue, a 90MHz overclock.
Gaming
Call of Duty World at War is the latest in a long line of World War II themed games in the COD franchise. This is set during World War II in the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO). COD: WAW was released last year and comes with various NVIDIA-based video cards including this one from MSI. The game played flawlessly on the GeForce GTS 250 card.
Far Cry 2 is a DirectX 10.0 game that was released last year. This game takes place in a fictional African country with your character trying to assassinate a warlord. The game uses Pixel Shader 4.0 effects with beautiful scenery and graphics. Far Cry2 plays great on the GTS 250 from MSI with frame rates in the 30s at high resolutions and settings.
Mirror's Edge is a game that showcases the GeForce GTS 250 features and effects. This game makes extensive use of PhysX effects including: Smoke, Debris, Cloth and more. The game played well on the GTS 250 with frame rates in the 30s at 1280x1024 with PhysX enabled and AA turned on. The game uses PhysX to good effect and it is only playable on NVIDIA graphics cards.
Game screenshots
Test Setup & Software
MSI's card is designed to be competing in the under $150 range. At that prices point the likely competition is the Radeon 4870 512MB card as of today's date. In terms of performance I will be looking at this card versus a 512MB GTS 250, a 4870 512MB, a 4870 1GB to reflect performance against the competition in this price range.
Test System
- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 running 3.2GHz
- 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2000MHz memory running at 1333MHz
- XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard running 15.53 Forceware
- MSI N250GTS-2D1G video card running 182.50 Forceware drivers
- 2 74GB WD Raptor SATA HDDs in RAID 0 Mode
- Windows Vista 32-bit Business with SP1
Tests
DX9
- STALKER Shadows of Chernobyl 1280x1024, 1920x1200, 4x AA 16x AF Custom FRAPS Walkthrough
- Enemy Territory QuakeWars 1280x1024, 1920x1200, 4x AA 16x AF Custom FRAPS Walkthrough
- Unreal Tournament 3 1280x1024, 1920x1200, 4x AA 16x AF Custom FRAPS Walkthrough
- Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare: 1280x1024, 1920x1200, 4x AA 16x AF, Custom FRAPS Walkthrough
- 3DMark05/06 1280x1024, 1920x1200
- SpecViewPerf 10
- PCMark05/Vantage
DX10
- Crysis Patch 1.2.1 1280x1024. 1920x1200 4x AA 16x AF Custom FRAPS walkthrough of first area
- Lost Planet latest version, 1280x1024, 1920x1200 4x AA 16x AF Performance benchmark
- 3DMark Vantage 1280x1024, 1920x1200 default benchmarks
- Bioshock DX10 1280x1024, 1920x1200 4x AA 16x AF, Custom FRAPS walkthrough
Performance DirectX9
DirectX10
3DMark
SpecViewPerf10
Conclusion
MSI has taken the GeForce GTS 250 card and clocked it higher than the reference design, which NVIDIA clocks their standard cards at. While performance is not much improved, a lot of it can be attributed to the fact that the higher clock is only a fraction higher than the reference card. The card Overclocks extremely well with almost 100MHz overclock attained using the cooler. The benefits of this card compared to the reference card are virtually silent operation (as the fan is very silent), low temperatures under operation and higher clock speeds. The card is available online for $154.99 and comes with COD WAW when purchased from a participating etailer who is currently running that promotion. This card does however have 1GB of memory and that does help in many games over its 512MB brethren making it a Hot Product for this price range.
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