Buy an unlocked Intel 4th gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of
Rome 2: Total War. Click now to learn more. It's lightning time again, folks.
MSI has their regular cards. Then their
gaming cards, both of which are pretty sweet, but they're truly flagship
graphics cards are branded lightning, presumably because they are so flashy
looking. Or wait, no, hold on. It's probably because they're powerful and
lightning is made of electricity and clouds. Wait, hold on. Ju just
electricity? How does it even m So, the first thing you're going to
notice about this graphics card is the weight. Holy balls. It comes in an
awesome carrying case style box with a full set of accessories, including PCI
Express six pin to 8 pin adapters and even an alternate back plate for the
card if you swap decide to swap out the full length one for just a smaller short
one. Once the box is open, the next obvious thing is the fact that this is
not a reference card. I mean, here's a
picture of a reference card for context. It is smaller and punier in every
possible way. Because of this, you will need to make sure that your system is
capable of containing the greatness of the GTX 780 Lightning. side panel fans
could interfere with its increased height and you'll need to make sure that
you have enough expansion slots free because due to its two plus slot cooler,
it will take up one, two, three PCI
slots. Now, because the card is based on the GeForce GTX 780 GPU, there are no
real surprises in terms of normal NVIDIA graphics card features. You got support
for SLI, 3D Vision, Fizzax, CUDA,
G-Sync, and of course, GeForce Experience, which has now added game
streaming to compatible devices like NVIDIA Shield. Low overhead gameplay
recording, and Twitch live streaming to its ability to optimize your game
settings and keep your graphics drivers all up to date and all of that good
stuff. But that's not why you were shopping for a Lightning. Let's talk
about what makes this card special. First up is the fact that this is a very
non-reference PCB. It utilizes components with MSI's military class
concept, including Dr. Moss 4, copper
moss, high caps, new super ferite chokes, and their dark solid capacitors.
So, unless you've got some electrical engineering under your belt, most of
that probably sounded like gibberish. But the point is that even though the
mil standard 810G compliance doesn't really mean much, a lightning card is
capable of running faster, cooler, and longer than a typical reference card.
Second is their triple force architecture. So the lightning logo on
the top illuminates green, blue, or red depending on the load. Their twin Frozer
cooler design has been updated to triozer with three PWM controlled
propeller blade fans rather than two. And their power delivery system for the
card itself has been decked out with an all digital design. Core, memory, and
auxiliary voltage are all digital. Next
up is the GPU reactor, which is basically like an extra PCB strapped to
the back of a card to reduce ripple and increase power delivery to the GPU core.
In practice, this will be way beyond irrelevant unless you're using exotic
cooling methods, but hey, it's there. To go along with it, their V checkpoints
allow you to easily monitor key card voltages if you're performing mods and
want to use a dedicated multimedia rather than multimedia multimeter rather
than software to find out how much juice you're giving to key components on the
card. particularly when you're extreme overclocking. Their twin BIOS feature
gives you two separate BIOS chips, which
is good because if you can find your way to get your hands on the non-nerfed LN2
BIOS that allows a power limit over
109%, then uh that might be pretty useful. Now, to be clear, guys, we
benchmarked our card assuming that end users will have to just deal with the
stock BIOS, but trust me, there is more potential in this card if you're willing
to get a little bit crazy. And that dual BIOS implementation means that there's
an easy bailout switch if something goes wrong during a BIOS flash. Triple over
voltage that is cranking up the volts to the GPU memory and PLLL is all handled
separately because of that feature and it is fully supported by MSI's
afterburner software. But again, it will have limited
relevance unless you perform the BIOS flash that I was talking about a moment
ago because that is going to hold back
the true raw potential of this graphics
card in a very meaningful way. So the conclusion is this. The GTX 780
Lightning is, how you say, uh, lightning fast. We threw a few games at it from
our usual suite of benchmarks, and while it doesn't really stand out from the
crowd in terms of its performance, just as a reminder, guys, all of our cards
are overclocked as high as they can go, in my opinion, it's really very
reasonably priced. For $50 more than a reference 780 running at reference
clocks and as little as 20 to $30 more than a normal non-reference card, if
nothing else, you're getting better build quality and cooler operation for
your graphics card throughout its lifetime. It's also aggressively
overclocked out of the box at a full 133 MHz faster max boost clock than a
reference GTX 780. and it has no difficulty hitting those numbers
consistently while running cooler and still being satisfyingly quiet. My only
issue with the 780 Lightning actually has nothing to do with MSI, but rather
to do with NVIDIA. Since it was released, the 780 Lightning has been
nerfed with that 109% power limit BIOS
that I was talking about before versus the aggressive one that it had available
to it at launch. This practice of NVIDIA's where non-approved card designs
are limited puts some restraints on their partners' ability to deliver the
best possible performance. And while I understand NVIDIA's perspective, um, and
you know, I agree that maintaining a brand image of reliability is more
important than three more FPS in Battlefield in general. I wish that the
card partners and endusers were allowed
to make their own choice and forego warranty coverage if they really want to
push things to the limit. I mean, I guess the really extreme guys still can
if they go and find BIOS mods, but I just wish it was a little bit easier.
Anyway, guys, thanks for watching this
review of the MSI GeForce GTX 780
Lightning. Don't forget to like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you
disliked it. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Would you spend an
extra 20 to $50 knowing that your card's going to run cooler and it's going to
look better and it's going to last longer, or is that not worth it to you?
Do you upgrade so often that it doesn't really matter? And then finally, guys,
as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.