MSI N250GTS-2D1G OC GeForce GTS 250 Video Card Review :: 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.