MSI hits the scene with their own version of the AMD HD 6950. This features the Twin Frozr II cooling solution and has a price point slightly above where most reference HD 6950s sit. When combined with MSI's Afterburner software, this card becomes an interesting tool in a gamer's arsenal. We find out how it runs when combined with the Catalyst 11.4 Preview Driver, which delivers some significant improvements in performance for the Cayman family of chips.

Personally I like the card. I was disappointed I could not mod it successfully to a HD 6970, but even in stock form the card is not slow. I am doing some “long term” testing on this particular model in my main machine, clocked at a much more mundane 900 MHz core and 1350 MHz memory. This has provided a nice performance boost, all the while producing less sound than the more aggressive overclock I did while testing. So far the card has worked flawlessly at this speed, and it has handled every application I have thrown at it with aplomb.