MSI announced its Gaming Slim RTX 40 graphics cards at the end of last month. We have noticed that it has fleshed out the series to include Nvidia’s top-end Ada Lovelace graphics cards, specifically the GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 models, two of the best graphics cards. If anything, these typically bulkier, powerful cards should benefit more from the slimming exercise.
The MSI Gaming Slim series began with lower-end GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 4070, and RTX 4070 Ti graphics cards. MSI has decided product proliferation is its friend and produced the above four models with variants in black and white and in both Gaming and Gaming X (overclocked) variants – for 12 new models in total.
Today, if you head on over to the official MSI product pages, you will find that there are a further five new entrants at the high-end of the Gaming Slim series as follows:
- MSI GeForce RTX 4090 24G Gaming Slim
- MSI GeForce RTX 4090 24G Gaming X Slim
- MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16G Gaming Slim
- MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16G Gaming Slim White
- MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16G Gaming X Slim
Like us, you might wonder how slim these new graphics cards are compared to previously available examples. This query was answered nicely by MSI’s official product comparison engine (see image below).
The MSI Gaming Slim RTX 4080 and 4090 are a little slimmer than the previous corresponding Gaming Trio models. In the case of the RTX 4080, the Slim model is just 5mm thinner (but also a bit smaller in the other two dimensions) and 203g lighter. As for the RTX 4090 Gaming Slim, it seems to be a more worthwhile 15mm slimmer. In terms of weight, the RTX 4090 Gaming Slim also gets a much more significant reduction, being 393g lighter. However, the size isn’t an issue if the GPU is adequately supported in the case - and these models come with a support bracket as a standard issue. A weighty cooler sometimes indicates quality, with a large/heavy heatsink used so the active cooling (fans) doesn’t have to be so active.
MSI also slightly revamped the display outputs. For example, the regular GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio 24G has three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and only one HDMI 2.1a port. On the contrary, the GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming X Slim 24G features two of each.
Other specifications appear unchanged besides the slimmed-down coolers and, thus, these cards’ overall size and weight reductions. It would probably be wise to wait until several third-party reviews of these Gaming Slim cards, with their trimmed-down cooling solutions, before rushing out to buy one. The cooler is the chief differentiator among graphics card models, and scaling it back in size and weight might lead to undesirable comparisons vs. rival series, like the earlier Gaming Trio models.
