MSI GeForce GTX 580 Lightning Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,027 words · ~10 min read
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today I have two things that I'm very excited about one of them is the fact
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that it is finally outdoor unboxing season again that makes me very very
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happy I'm here in my t-shirt I'm outside I'm on the bench I'm unboxing products
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the other one is the product I am unboxing today this is an awesomely
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excitingly fantastically uberly
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sweetness product that I will be checking out today the first time I saw
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this was at CES 2011 this is the MSI GTX
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580 lightning it uses 16 power phases
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which is four times more than a reference 570 and twice and sum to 2
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point whatever 2.66 times more than a
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reference 580 it has triple over voltage which means that using MSI After Burner
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you can overvolt three different aspects of the card you have the twin frozer 3
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cooler okay it's ready for 3D Mark 11 which basically I guess means it's
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directed X1 which it bloody well better be since it's a 580 it uses the military
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Class 2 concept we have support for MSI After
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Burner GeForce Cuda SLI physx and 3D Vision don't forget also NVIDIA surround
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if you run two of these suckers all right also inside here we find some more
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information so power for architecture the most powerful power system on GTX
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580 tremendous power to the GPU memory and PLL for overclocking to unleash the
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potential okay 16 phase power design oh I'm sorry the reference one apparently
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has eight alone my quick Google before starting this indicated six so maybe you
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guys can leave some comments and tell me which one is correct independent memory
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power looks like this card is going to require dual 8 Pin connectors proyer
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proyer okay features its incredible
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capacitance and crazy low ESR compared to solid caps interesting okay copper
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Moss compared to traditional mosfets super faite chokes highly conductive
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capacitors uh these SE are the ones with the tantalum core solid caps okay so all
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of that good uh military Class 2 stuff lightning power layer sweet okay so
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unique PCB design for the GPU memory and power layer increases power supply
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stability and eliminates power noise meaning Ripple
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interesting all right so this is one of the few video cards where there's
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actually enough for them to talk about that they managed to cover this whole thing with completely unique stuff so
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dual 9 cm pwm fans nickel plated copper
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base high density fins this is all about the cooler propeller blades which we've
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seen debut on the GTX
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550ti uh that was the Cyclone okay
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superpipe technology which means thick thick heat pipes and let's see if
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there's anything else on the back finally no no there is not so it
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uses 1.5 gigs of memory like a standard GTX 580 and unless you're talking like
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big surround resolutions really that's
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enough so we got the card we got oo
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check this out okay so the first accessory I'm going to show you guys
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these are V checks so you can use these to check the voltage to uh various parts
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of your GTX 580 lightning so this is a
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feature we've seen on many MSI motherboards in the past but very few
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graphics cards we got a couple six pin to 8 Pin PCIe adapters but honestly if
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you're not using a proper power supply and you're trying to run a beast card
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like this you're probably doing it wrong
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okay next we have a DVI to VGA adapter also for people who are doing it wrong
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and finally we have some other stuff
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down here which is probably mostly irrelevant look at that massive SLI
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Bridges okay MSI After Burner got a
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quick user guide as well as um whatever
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this is okay so let's go ahead put that
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back on there and let's get this card
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out of the packaging so we can see it
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okay it's pretty heavy I'll tell you guys
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that so far although I haven't been able to have a close look at it yet so I
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can't really say much else about the card itself other than that it is heavy
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and that it comes in an anti-static bag all right Beast love it okay so why
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don't we start with the inputs and outputs the first thing you're going to notice is the gold accents on these DVI
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ports HDMI port and yeah check that out
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DisplayPort so this is a completely
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custom PCB if you didn't figure that out already featuring non-standard display
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layout so instead of a mini HDMI we have a full-size HDMI and a DisplayPort to
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go along with it we've got a half of a vent but that's not really going to
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matter too much because if you look at the overall design of the cooler it's
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quite open so it's going to exhaust a lot of air inside the case as opposed to
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being completely external exhaust mind you if you were planning to install
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something like this in your system and you don't have a well ventilated case
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already you're probably doing it wrong
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so uh okay that pretty much covers the back here so why don't we move along to
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sort of the bottom so we've got our standard PCIe 16x uh interface here
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we've got some super pipes so you can see right there this one and this one
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are both substantially larger than the standard heat pipes so those are the
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ones that are carrying the heat furthest away from the GPU which is clearly right
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about here so over here and way out to the other side so that they transport
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the heat faster to the areas that are further away from the GPU core itself
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you can see the dense dense fin structure I'm going to spin these fans
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yeah yeah I know you're not supposed to dense fin structure here gives it a ton
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of surface area to dissipate Heat this is a monster cooler but MSI has managed
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to still maintain a dual slot profile
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rather than increasing it to triple slot like we've seen on some of the
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aftermarket coolers on gf10 based cards
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you've got the Dual 92mm propeller blade fans so you can see the blades of the
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fans are slightly different from what we've seen on previous aftermarket MSI
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coolers and they claim up to 20% more air flow using this blade design versus
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a similar RPM on a more conventional blade design it's got a really cool
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looking shroud that we're pretty used to seeing on Twin frozer branded cards but
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I I really like it so I'll talk about it some more all right we've got a unisync
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so you can see there is a black unisync that is making contact with the vrm it
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looks to be making contact with the memory as well you've got yeah you can
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see a thermal interface pad right there between the memory as well as this
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unisync so that's going to be getting a lot of direct cooling from the fans here
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as well as being a passive cooler just by um just by making contact with those
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components and by being a nice big surface area because you can see that
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unisync is way over here here it's here
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it's here it's way up here just massive
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now not only that but it's also going to provide more rigidity to the card so you
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can see this metal piece is actually right along the card here and stretches
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all the way back to the back what that means is once you install this in your case you know how you see guys with
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high-end systems they got their card installed and it's like it like droops
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down like this well with this card it's
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actually very very difficult to flex the PCB because of all of the metal
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structure that there is to it all along the length of the card okay you can see
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out the back here we've got a four pin pwm setup that is running both of those
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fans so those fans are just spliced together right around here okay so both
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of them are running off of the same header uh we've got uh you can see kind
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of the back of the cooler that's kind of irrelevant oh yeah the Dual four pin
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power connectors so the Dual four pin power connectors are up here this is
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where you're getting all your power unlike the GTX 480 lightning there are
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only two as opposed to three of them so it's a little bit less ludicrous in
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terms of the power supply that's required to run this guy but that's to
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be expected as gf10 is a more efficient chip than gf100 here we have those V
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check points so you can use those to monitor the voltage to the GPU the
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memory as well as the PLL you've also
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got a bio switch it has two settings now
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we're used to seeing these on uh AMD cards from the last generation or so but
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this is the first time I've seen it on a GeForce based card so you can see
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there's a liquid nitrogen 2 setting optimized for ln2 and then there's an
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original setting we've also got some V switches so this is for memory this is
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for pwm clock tuner uh PLL and ocp
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unlocker so we've got onboard switches these are all covered in tape but you
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can change the values if you
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desire okay what else is there to say about this ah yes SLI finger so this
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should pretty much reveal why it comes with its own SLI Bridges the reason is
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that normal SLI Bridges would be blocked by the unisync here as well as all of
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the structural nonsense that well not nonsense it's good good nonsense that
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goes on with this card so that's why you need a long SLI Bridge so you can plug
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this in make it up over this stuff and then reach the next over
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card you know what I think that's pretty much all I wanted to say oh we've got
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some like LEDs on the back so those probably are for power phase indication
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or something along those lines uh crazy Russian's indicating something to me oh
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here's something extreme cool one and extreme cool 2 we've got some more
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switches over here so maybe you guys can leave some comments about what that one
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is because that's not something that I'm familiar with and I did not see it
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outlined on the packaging so I don't know what that particular switches for
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so just want to have a look at the back okay we'll give you one more kind
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of overall view of the card switch it back around to the front so thank you
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for checking out this unboxing of the GTX 580 lightning from MSI don't forget
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to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews computer videos and
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all kinds of other random things whatever I feel like uploading I suppose
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okay ra crazy Russian told me what he was gesturing about he was gesturing
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about the fact that the PCB is taller than a standard video card PCB this is
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the normal height this is how tall a lightning PCB is so this card is
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physically taller than most cards sorry
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about that crazy Russian I misunderstood what you were saying because you speak
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with an accent Story of My Life