![opengl 4.3 gtx 970 opengl 4.3 gtx 970](https://c1.neweggimages.com/ProductImageCompressAll1280/ADRA_131793405466798845K1uFugn7T2.jpg)
So if you've got the room for it, the MSI is a great card. Its fans are not as big, but it's still quiet (it controls the fans individually, alternating them to keep the noise down).
![opengl 4.3 gtx 970 opengl 4.3 gtx 970](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/siggraph2012nvidiaopenglfor2012-120820103157-phpapp01/95/siggraph-2012-nvidia-opengl-for-2012-6-728.jpg)
I re-sold this card on Ebay and bought a Zotac GTX970, which is a normal-sized card with two 6-pin power connectors as god intended. Dell has designed their workstations with standard-sized cards in mind, and the bulk of this one prevented me from lower the card-retaining bracket and from latching the hard drive carrier. As a result, I could only run it with the computer half disassembled, because there just wasn't enough room. What's not so great is that the card sticks up well above the top of the card retention bracket. The fans don't even come on until the card is under load. The fans are big, which is great, because bigger fans are quieter, and these fans are very quiet. The next thing I notice is that it's big.
![opengl 4.3 gtx 970 opengl 4.3 gtx 970](https://versus-dot-com.imgix.net/imgixback.jpeg)
It was introduced in Fall of 2014 and is based on the Maxwell GM204 architecture. This isn't the same 8-pin connector as a CPU, though, so you're probably going to have to buy an adapter to hook it to some other supply rail in your PS (which I did). The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M is a 28 nm DirectX-11 graphics card for high-end notebooks. For some reason, they decided that two 150 Watt connectors weren't enough, so there is a six pin AND an eight-pin connector. I put this in a Dell T3500 workstation, so right off the bat, I noticed that I didn't have the right power connectors. I ran several benchmarks and the performance was outstanding. Upgrading from a GTX 860 Ti, the first thing I notice is that I never heard the fan. Great performer, but bulky and odd power requirements.