MSI GTX780 Lightning Review

MSI GTX780 Lightning Review 

Introduction

The GK110 GPU that’s been demolishing benchmarks since it first appeared on the GTX Titan, and then beneath the hood of the incredible GTX780 is unquestionably an enormous performer. It’s so good that at first glance the idea of overclocking it out the factory seems to be a strange one, given the amount of potential it has at stock.

However, if we’ve discovered one thing in our testing of factory overclocked GTX780s that the GK110 Kepler GPU responds massively to a boost in clock speed, so having the benefits of a 3rd party cooler alongside a factory overclock should be enough to tempt even the most fiscally prudent amongst you.

Just tweaking the clock speed would hardly be enough for MSI to give this particular card their Lightning moniker and fortunately there is a lot more beneath that yellow cooler.

Technical Specifications

There is a big increase on both the Core and Boost clocks, up from 863/900 to 980/1033. That should see a large performance improvement when compared to the standard cards, even with the memory remaining at 6008MHz effective.

Model GTX780 Lightning
Cores 2304
Core Clock 980MHz
Boost Clock 1033MHz
Memory 3 GB GDDR5
Memory Bit-Rate 384 Bit
Memory Clock Speed 1502MHz (6GHz)
Cooling MSI TriFrozr
Connectivity 1 x DisplayPort
1 x Dual Link DVI-D
1 x Dual Link DVI-I
1 x HDMI
Power Phases 16+3+1
Power Connectors 2x 8 Pin PCIe
GPU Power 250W