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MSI Radeon HD 7970 Lightning (Enthusiast Overclocked Graphics Card) Review

Final8y

Final8y

Final8y

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Since the release of AMDs 7900 series we have taken a look at several 7970 products from various manufacturers including two factory overclocked models which applied a custom design to the solid AMD base. As is always the case though time to work with a new product results in manufacturers pushing it further and further towards its limit.

Today we have the most extreme 7970 we have received yet, the MSI Radeon 7970 Lightning. On paper MSI have taken this GPU to a whole new level with extra PCB's, voltage read points, power phases and top of the line components so we are going to do the same. Rather than bench the card at its impressive factory overclock we are taking it to the limit, its maximum stable overclock to see how it compares to the reference design as well as an overclocked, 3GB GTX 580.
Click to expand...
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...locked-graphics-card-review-introduction.html
 
On our sample we were able to achieve were 1265MHz on the core and 1505 MHz on memory with the overclocked BIOS. That is the highest core overclock we have seen on a 7970 by some way and the end result is the performance increases shown throughout this review.


Definitely impressive.
 
This bit just makes me seriously drool.

msi-r7970-lightning_base.jpg


It's about time companies understood that if we have a window in our PC the only part of the card we get to see much of is the back !

I hope this is the shape of things to come.
 
Impressive card, well thought out with four mini-DisplayPorts, two dvi connectors, output 7.1 audio over HDMI including DTS Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD & two 8pin power connectors.:eek:

Hopefully we will see Asus, Gigabyte, plus others now bring out some similar custom 7970 cards.

With a card like this, I'm thinking sod Kepler, get one of these instead.:D
 
Last edited:
ajones32 said:
How does one of these compare against two 6970 Lightnings of which I have?
Click to expand...

The 6950 CF will most likely be as fast as the 7970 going off a quick 2 minute search through google. I have no factual evidence to back this up though, so it might be horribly wrong.
 
I was going to get the Gigabyte OC version but this has changed my mind. if Kepler can't beat this then I'm having one
 
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