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msi 580 3gb vs phantom 580 3gb

muggs

muggs

muggs

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25 Jun 2007
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tried google cant find much. im trying to find out which one is best, obviously phantom looks cooler, msi seems to have the upper hand in technology although this could be just marketing bs.

also if you were going to watercool would you go for the cheapest 3gb or is there a pretty major quality difference of the pcb's from the three manufacturers, are they custom pcbs or are all 3gb's pcb's the same. of course if msi talk of quality components is true then that would most likely be the best bet.
 
Most of the 3gb cards are non reference boards and you can get blocks for them.

The only reference 3gb 580 I think is the EVGA 3gb. The non water blocked version.
But they are very hard to get hold of at the moment becuase you can water cool them and still keep your warranty. That's the card i'm waiting to get hold of.
 
muggs said:
MSI seems to have the upper hand in technology although this could be just marketing bs.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Yes we do & we have done for a while.

& no it's definitely not marketing BS. Check the HWBOT world records for VGA Overclocking and you'll see for yourself. The components are the key:
- Copper MOS give twice the current capacity whilst remaining 20% cooler
- Proadlizers provide lower current ripple and higher capacitance
- The lightning cards are the only cards with three dedicated power phases just for the RAM (driven by the PSU rather than the motherboard)
- Super Ferrite Chokes provide 30% more current capacity and 10% better efficiency
All these add up to a major advantage to both enthusiasts and hardcore overclockers.

Just a few for example. We hold the top clock speed record & Unigene Heaven DX11 record on the 580 core with the Lightning card
Our 560 Ti Hawk holds for same records for that core and our 480 GTX Lightning held 27 of the top 30 3DMark scores on a single GTX 480 (still does iirc)

on the watercooling front, we are working with a watercooling manufacturer to produce a waterblock for the 580 GTX Lightning, I'll let you guys know once it's released.
 
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that does sound mighty impressive scotti and if a after market waterblock can be made for these coupled with not losing your warranty when putting it on i'll probably take two of them.

also one more thing scotti, i have a asus maximus 4 extreme and it has two dedicated molex connecters to give extra(i think or maybe seperate is the word) power to the gpu's....will the power phases for the ram make these useless? actually i suppose the molex's would still be able to give but just not to the ram.
 
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The MSI Lightning is designed for LN2 sessions, and it's been proven that the overclockability under aircooling is better than other GTX580 as well. If you know the history then you should know that the Lightning series have hit many world records there in the past. However keep in mind that it is a non-reference card with a huge size, and it may be hard to find water blocks for them.

If you are interested in watercooling then you might consider buying the waterblock version of 3GB from EVGA straight-away, or get the reference design of 3GB from EVGA and use waterblocks of your own choice.
 
i have a 580 lightning and i still find its limited by the silicon lottery, some are good some not so.

i can get 915 to run a heaven benchmark but i get red flashes of light during the bench

i have to lower my core to 850 to stop the flashes so nothing to write home about
 
F1aw1ess said:
i have a 580 lightning and i still find its limited by the silicon lottery, some are good some not so.

i can get 915 to run a heaven benchmark but i get red flashes of light during the bench

i have to lower my core to 850 to stop the flashes so nothing to write home about
Click to expand...

Yes it's still a lottery.. but I've never seen one so *imba* as yours... I've only heard about a sample not being able to do over 930MHz at 1.213v
 
n580lightningoc.png


despite being used & abused by a number of reviers my sample still benches at these speeds on air. It's not from the best that I've seen and not the worst. One of the other samples we had hit 1100Mhz with similar voltages.

On the subject about whether the lightning makes additional PCi-Express power obsolete or not, it's hard to say for sure but having a three-phase proadlizer driven power source for the memory definitely makes a big difference to the peak stability of the memory as you can see above.

The silicon lottery is always an issue but a more stable power source gets more from a weak GPU. The continual record breaking scores of our Hawk and Lightning cards cannot be a fluke and MSI cannot just be lucky.
 
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ewarwoowar said:
Most of the 3gb cards are non reference boards and you can get blocks for them.

The only reference 3gb 580 I think is the EVGA 3gb. The non water blocked version.
But they are very hard to get hold of at the moment becuase you can water cool them and still keep your warranty. That's the card i'm waiting to get hold of.
Click to expand...

Problem is, it's expensive as ****!
I would get the MSI and if you want to liquid cool, there are some blocks out for the non ref 580's.

This is a useful tool to determine which blocks will fit:
http://www.coolingconfigurator.com/
 
I hit 1000 on the core with my tf2 under water :)

1.15v as well, I really want to reach 1.1 or higher :D
 
phantom 580 3gb pulls the air through and we all know that its much more efficient to push air through so my choice would be the msi all day long.
 
You sure about that? Push is just as effective as pull on radiators, and for heats mms pull is generally better...

You got a source for that? I would find a few but I'm on my iPhone, which makes things a little difficult
 
Shayper said:
You sure about that? Push is just as effective as pull on radiators, and for heats mms pull is generally better...

You got a source for that? I would find a few but I'm on my iPhone, which makes things a little difficult
Click to expand...

For high pressure/low CFM fans push is slightly better, while for high CFM/low pressure fans pull is slightly better. That's because the density of hot air is less than that of cold air.
 
Hmm, I see where you are coming from. I would guess that the fans on the phantom are high pressure, as they focus on a smaller area, so unless gainward have designed these fans to provide higher cfm then the Msi would be better :)
 
ScottiB said:
Hi,

Yes we do & we have done for a while.

& no it's definitely not marketing BS. Check the HWBOT world records for VGA Overclocking and you'll see for yourself. The components are the key:
- Copper MOS give twice the current capacity whilst remaining 20% cooler
- Proadlizers provide lower current ripple and higher capacitance
- The lightning cards are the only cards with three dedicated power phases just for the RAM (driven by the PSU rather than the motherboard)
- Super Ferrite Chokes provide 30% more current capacity and 10% better efficiency
All these add up to a major advantage to both enthusiasts and hardcore overclockers.

Just a few for example. We hold the top clock speed record & Unigene Heaven DX11 record on the 580 core with the Lightning card
Our 560 Ti Hawk holds for same records for that core and our 480 GTX Lightning held 27 of the top 30 3DMark scores on a single GTX 480 (still does iirc)

on the watercooling front, we are working with a watercooling manufacturer to produce a waterblock for the 580 GTX Lightning, I'll let you guys know once it's released.
Click to expand...

I'm not bashing MSI, infact if I had the money I'd love to get a 580 lightning, but if they have so much confidence in their products why do they only offer a 2 year warranty? When you pay over £400 for a card you'd expect a 3 year warranty as standard. The US get a 3 year warranty so why not the UK?

Just my thoughts.
 
AzZ said:
I'm not bashing MSI, infact if I had the money I'd love to get a 580 lightning, but if they have so much confidence in their products why do they only offer a 2 year warranty? When you pay over £400 for a card you'd expect a 3 year warranty as standard. The US get a 3 year warranty so why not the UK?

Just my thoughts.
Click to expand...
A GPU card is normally worth almost nothing by the time it over 2 years old,

so why worry about it ?? :confused:
 
Why are the 1.5gb hard to get at the moment i can,t find any in stock at retailers i trust and one of the popular retailers has it down as discontinued have you stoped doing the normal lightning now?
 
definitely not

All lightnings are short in supply at the moment. These cards are 100% custom so they are not as easy to churn out in quantity.

I hope that OcUK will have stock again in the next week or two.
 
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