Gamers Rejoice, MSI Unveils GeForce RTX 4070 Super 12G Gaming X Slim Card
The first of NVIDIA's refreshed GeForce RTX 40 Super series GPUs to land at retail will be the GeForce RTX 4070 Super, which releases later this week—Wednesday, January 17 starting at $599, to be precise. Gamers will be able to choose between NVIDIA's Founders Edition (FE) card and several custom models from its hardware partners, one of which is MSI's GeForce RTX 4070 Super Gaming X Slim MLG.
MSI's 'Gaming Slim' series denotes a "thinner variant of the Gaming series while maintaining high performance capabilities and aggressive looks." In this case, the dimensions are listed at 307 x 125 x 46 millimeters (12.09 x 4.92 x 1.81 inches), with a listed weight of 982 grams (2.16 pounds). So it's still a large graphics card, though not quite as big as some models that will make it to market. It's also a dual-slot card.
In terms of the "aggressive" styling, the GeForce RTX 4070 Super Gaming X Slim MLG sports MSI's Tri Frozr 3 cooler, which wields three Torx 5.0 fans (each with MSI's dragon logo) that purportedly deliver 23% more airflow compared to axial fans, and a red color scheme. Other cooling features include a nickel-plated copper baseplate and heatpipes that are squared off to make direct contact with the baseplate.
On the backside, users can optionally slap on a special edition decorative magnetic cover with an anime theme. This comes included with the card rather than being sold separately, which is a nice touch. We also like that it attaches to the backplate, which means users won't have to take out any screws. Speaking of which, the anime-themed backplate essentially covers the screws and screw holes when attached for a cleaner look. The caveat is that you have to be into anime to appreciate the design.
It also partially covers an exposed section of the aluminum-finned heatsink, so it will be interesting to see how airflow, temps, and overall cooling compares with the cover installed, versus the stock backplate.
MSI's Gaming X Slim card gets a 5W bump to 245W for the TGP, compared to NVIDIA's 220W reference design, and 240W TGP for its own FE model. The card also ships with a respectable overclock—2,640MHz boost clock, or 2,655MHz via Extreme Performance mode (selectable in the MSI Center software). NVIDIA's reference specs call for a 2,475MHz boost clock.
There's no word yet on when MSI's custom GeForce RTX 4070 Super Gaming X Slim card will be available or how much it will cost. Generally speaking, however, placeholders for custom models on Best Buy have been fairly close to NVIDIA's MSRPs for its Super refresh.
