MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G LE Video Card Review

Introduction

MSI has a few GeForce GTX 980s in its ever-growing arsenal of Maxwell-powered video card products, with the quietly announced GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G LE. LE standing for Lite Edition, which reduces the overclock on the GM204 core slightly against its more behemoth bigger brother, the Gaming 4G.

The company has donned this card with the kick-ass Twin Frozr V cooler that we fell in love with on the MSI GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 2G, but this time we have it on the much faster GTX 980. The company has stuck to the reference design in terms of display outputs, and has some nifty tricks with its fan and software to keep the card running cool, but also quiet.

MSI has been a fan favorite to gamers for a number of years now with some bleeding edge products, especially with its more than impressive Twin Frozr cooling technology. Mix this with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics core and some overclocking and we are most likely in for a winner here.

Quick Specs

MSI has decreased the overclock on the GTX 980 core with its GTX 980 Gaming 4G LE when compared against the normal GTX 980 Gaming 4G. We'll get into that in the next few pages, but for now we have 4GB of GDDR5 at its stock 7GHz frequency, the aforementioned Twin Frozr V cooler, 4-way SLI support, DirectX 12 support, and more.

Above, we have the full list of specifications for the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G LE.

Availability & Price

Amazon doesn't list the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G LE, but it does list the normal GTX 980 Gaming 4G for $559.99, while Newegg sells the GTX 980 Gaming 4G LE for the same price: $559.99. At the time of writing, Newegg was displaying "out of stock" on the card.