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Lightning worth it?

masscrazy

masscrazy

masscrazy

Associate
Joined
26 Dec 2009
Posts
689
Location
London
So the Gigabyte 7970 WindForce is under £390 the MSI 7970 lightning is £420.

The 680 stock out performs the lightning in many cases, so is the lightning worth the price, where as I could get a 680 for 20-30£ more with 10-15% increase in performance and more with a good overclock...
 
masscrazy said:
So the Gigabyte 7970 WindForce is under £390 the MSI 7970 lightning is £420.

The 680 stock out performs the lightning in many cases, so is the lightning worth the price, where as I could get a 680 for 20-30£ more with 10-15% increase in performance and more with a good overclock...
Click to expand...

They are pretty much similar in performance. At the current stock of games, nobody would be able to pick out which card was in which rig if they ran the same games side by side.

Go with what your head tells you basically.
 
Lightning is better looking. The irony of course is that to get the best out of a Lightning you remove all of that and throw it under DICE.

On air the Windforce is every bit as good. The Lightning wasn't designed to be ran on air it was designed to be stripped down and break world records.

Funny really that the best Lightning they ever made was the 480 in terms of what you could get out of it. There was reason to do that too, as the stock cooler on the 480 is rather pants. I just don't see the point of some of the later ones, especially the 6970.

They are slowly taking away the exclusivity of owning one by mass producing them. Shame.
 
gregster said:
They are pretty much similar in performance. At the current stock of games, nobody would be able to pick out which card was in which rig if they ran the same games side by side.

Go with what your head tells you basically.
Click to expand...

if so then this cheap one is obviously best....i'm not worried about looks, because my case has no window.... which is a bit of a shame because i've done a lot of work to make the interior look nice.... oh well !
 
Mal X said:
if so then this cheap one is obviously best....i'm not worried about looks, because my case has no window.... which is a bit of a shame because i've done a lot of work to make the interior look nice.... oh well !
Click to expand...

As far as I care, it could look like a dog turd so long as it performs well, I really don't care what it looks like.
 
If electrical noise/squeal bugs you it might be a good buy, I've not used one but pretty sure the MSI custom cards are usually very quiet whereas the reference ones look prone to capacitor noise.
 
mmj_uk said:
If electrical noise/squeal bugs you it might be a good buy, I've not used one but pretty sure the MSI custom cards are usually very quiet whereas the reference ones look prone to capacitor noise.
Click to expand...

i dont have to worry about noise !!!!!!
 
masscrazy said:
Hmm £30 more than the windforce atm, would you go lightning or WF?
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The msi lightning cant do 2560x1440 over the dvi is single not dual dvi.
this is a joke on msi part, the windforce does ;)
i have the windforce 7970 and can run 24/7 1250gpu and happy on memory 1700 but goes up to just short of 2000.
the 7970 is a no brainer. eyefinity over 3 screens runs bf3 on ultra 1 card.
 
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Dazboots said:
The msi lightning cant do 2560x1440 over the dvi is single not dual dvi.
this is a joke on msi part, the windforce does ;)
i have the windforce 7970 and can run 24/7 1250gpu and happy on memory 1700 but goes up to just short of 2000.
the 7970 is a no brainer. eyefinity over 3 screens runs bf3 on ultra 1 card.
Click to expand...

Really, this is the first im hearing of the dvi being single link...

Yeah battling between 680 and 7970 lightning/7970 WF...:confused:
 
masscrazy said:
Really, this is the first im hearing of the dvi being single link...

Yeah battling between 680 and 7970 lightning/7970 WF...:confused:
Click to expand...

Yep lightning is a single link dvi, its a joke. high powered card
to play on low res. u will need to spend £75 on a active startech adpater.
http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R7970-Lightning.html

can do dual link but with display port only.
1920x1200 max dvi :(
 
I find it rather funny that people are actually worried about what resolutions the Lightning can do.

Holy miss the point, Batman.

Those power stages and all of the other stuff on the Lightning is not there to give you a good game of BF3, they're there to be used with DICE and clocked to merry heck.

You know? it's kind of like buying a RIVE and running your Sandy Bridge CPU at stock.
 
ALXAndy said:
I find it rather funny that people are actually worried about what resolutions the Lightning can do.

Holy miss the point, Batman.

Those power stages and all of the other stuff on the Lightning is not there to give you a good game of BF3, they're there to be used with DICE and clocked to merry heck.

You know? it's kind of like buying a RIVE and running your Sandy Bridge CPU at stock.
Click to expand...

It would bother me buying this card to run 2560x1440 and then find out i cant. it needs to be said in description that it cant run over 1900 res, ie dvi.
 
wait what?

I though the adapters were for doing eyefinity. Surely a normal adapter should work fine.

Also how does that work with diaplay port, can I use display port to DVI adapter to connect a 1440p monitor?
 
Also from OCuk regarding warrantys and MSI

"the first year of purchase it would be [dealt by ocuk]. The remaining years you would have to contact MSI about a replacement."
 
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