MSI 980 Ti Lightning Air cooling review by 8Pack
The MSI lightning range of cards has been the most successful overclocking series of cards ever made for benching and gamer's alike.
With this MSI have taken both AMD and Nvidia high end GPU redesigned the PCB and power delivery to produce a true hero product.
The last Lightning series was R290X lightning for me a great product taking all benching WR's from single GPU to quad Crossfire. This being said I was very pleased to learn MSI had designed
a 980 Ti lightning and that I would be able to bench test it on air cooling and beyond.
The MSI 980 Ti lighting design is robust to say the least. Both in PCB design and cooling its over engineered so that every ounce of performance can be extracted from the 980 TI GPU.
The PCB is a 10 layer design with full 10 Phase Power supplying the GPU alone. The memory has further 3 phase delivery so as to get as much stable power to the mems as possible and
enhance the overclocking potential.
The MSI 980 Ti Lightning has a distinctive Black and yellow triple fan cooler that matches perfectly there own M Power or X power Series of motherboards as well as any other black or black
and yellow combination motherboards. The card has a full length black back plate which adds rigidity to the PCB, extra cooling and looks great with the lightning branding visible too.
On air 2 way SLI is no issue at all but three and four way may need water as to my eyes the fan blades would hit the card below if not a slightly larger gap than 2 slot was available.
Here we have some pics of this aesthetically great looking card mounted in my test rig ready for testing.
Lets now check out some performance results when overclocked. For these overclocking tests I used MSI afterburner to control the card but added no voltage and used the auto fan profile so
as the results I achieve can be attained by all most end users dependent on sample quality of course.
Test Rig:
5960X 4875mhz
ASUS RVE X99 motherboard
Kingston DDR4 Predators
8Pack 2000w PSU
Kingston SSD
Windows 8.1 64 Bit
Nvidia Forceware 353.06 Drivers.
3D mark Firestrike
3D Mark Firestrike Xtreme
3D Mark Firestrike Ultra
Heaven 1080P (maxed out)
Valley 1080p Extreme HD
Valley 4K Extreme HD
As you can see from the benchmarks the overclocking performance of this Ti is very high with 1525-1550 mhz core and 2125-2150+ mhz mems no problem on the stock cooler. This is infact
the best performing 980 Ti I have ever tested on stock volts and cooling which is very impressive given I have already reviewed many of the flagship cards from all the major players.
Check out our OCUK forum Firestrike thread and you will see this card with a touch of volts beating all water cooled Titan X never mind Ti giving you a measure of how good this Ti really is.
The cooler is both quiet in operation and effective in cooling this overclocked Ti. My sample never got above 68C when being bench tested for a long period of time at high mhz and if for
benching you force the fan to full it never exceeds 63C running full pelt!!
In conclusion I recommend this TI to all gamers and overclockers. It is a cool, quiet,well built, performance monster!! and the best I have tested to date.
I will add some LN2 testing results to this review in time. Some world records on the way I think
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=28690698&postcount=1
980 Ti HOF Air Review 8Pack style!!!
KFA2 have been making world record breaking GPU for several generations now. There 780 Ti HOF was by far the fastest 780 Ti on the market dominating 3D mark score boards on the Bot and
Future marks own site. Since this ground breaking product the 980 HOF and 980 HOF 8Pack version performed in the same vein with at one stage 980 HOF holding all world records on HWbot.
When I received my test ES 980 Ti HOF back at Computex I was very excited by the product. Great power delivery and efficiency enabling me to take 3D mark 11 WR and Heaven WR using Ln2
cooling. The product oozing quality I had no qualms in recommending it for enthusiasts of elite tier hardware.
When the production 980 Ti HOF came into stock I could not wait to try one and show the forums what its capable of. First of all we have the look of the product. The distinctive white PCB, robust
3 fan 2.5 slot cooling solution and substantial white back plate all not only perform great as I will show later but look truly awesome. End users considering this card should note only two card SLI
is possible on stock cooler as its too wide to cram cards close together in TRI SLI or above. For three way SLI plus KFA2 have a card with retrofitted waterblocks which handle this config perfectly.
This seems sensible on there behalf as often anything over two way is often overheating on any air cooling solutions.
Below are pics of the great looking card in my GPU test Rig.
The card I chose from stock was totally chosen at random. It had an ASIC quality for those interested of 75.5% with its stock boost speed being 1420mhz.
The testing methodology I used for the overclocking testing was Max out the power limit. Use only stock volts. Test with auto fan profiles. I did this so that I am sure most customers can reach the
same mhz and beyond of my testing.
I also tried full speed fan cooler so I could see how fan speed effected load temps.
Review System specs:
5960X 4.875mhz
ASUS Rampage V Extreme
8Pack PSU
GSKILL mems 2666mhz
Windows 8.1
Nforce 353.06 WHQL driver
Below are my testing results.
Firestrike Xtreme
Firestrike
Firestrike Ultra 4K
Valley 1080p maxed out
Heaven 1080p maxed out
Heaven 4K maxed out
So as we can see from the scores my sample could run with stock volts and fan speed 1525-1530 Core and 2000-2050 mems through all the tests on its stock Air cooler. If you give it some voltage
and crank the fans then I am sure it can go even higher. These results are very impressive in themselves with the limitations I imposed on testing to make sure repeatable is very possible by any
end user.
The cooler on Auto performed very well with the card never going above 66C and most of the time hovering around 63-64C. This is very much up there with the best of the best in terms of cooling.
To my ears its a touch quieter than say for example ASUS Strix which on Auto allows the card to get to higher temps at 0db but then the fan needs to spin faster to bring the load temps under control.
The back plate is also getting warm so proving essential for removing heat from the PCB and doing its job well. The cooling design with the VRM heatsink being built into the main cooler also makes for
efficient VRM heat removal and stops unnecessary heat soak into the PCB.
If you force the fan to full the GPU never got above 56C during my testing and was usually running at 54C load. These are truly great temps with the extra length of the heat pipes being used to full
effect. Even at full fan speed the cooler is not crazy loud but is now certainly audible. For benching easy for the end user to live with though.
In conclusion I would recommend the KFA2 980 Ti HOF to any type of end user. For the gamer who does not OC its stock clock is very high and it is boosting at stock to 1420mhz. If you want to
overclock its very easy to reach 1525+ mhz core with absolutely no effort at all and the memory is also able to pass 2000+mhz without issue. All this while remaining cool and quiet in performance.
The cooler infact when forced to full fan was the coolest I have tested and the auto fan profile sees the card remain stable, cool and quiet.
Finally I think I should point out the looks. This is for me the best looking card available at the moment and its build quality is second to none. Especially if you have a white motherboard or a
motherboard with any white on the heat sinks this should be your absolute first choice card. If you don't have this color scheme but want performance again you should be considering this great product.
This KFA2 980 Ti HOF is truly living upto its Hall of Fame name in every way.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=28547143#post28547143