MSI GTX 780 Lightning
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,252 words · ~6 min read
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Buy an unlocked Intel 4th gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of
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Rome 2: Total War. Click now to learn more. It's lightning time again, folks.
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MSI has their regular cards. Then their
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gaming cards, both of which are pretty sweet, but they're truly flagship
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graphics cards are branded lightning, presumably because they are so flashy
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looking. Or wait, no, hold on. It's probably because they're powerful and
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lightning is made of electricity and clouds. Wait, hold on. Ju just
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electricity? How does it even m So, the first thing you're going to
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notice about this graphics card is the weight. Holy balls. It comes in an
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awesome carrying case style box with a full set of accessories, including PCI
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Express six pin to 8 pin adapters and even an alternate back plate for the
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card if you swap decide to swap out the full length one for just a smaller short
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one. Once the box is open, the next obvious thing is the fact that this is
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not a reference card. I mean, here's a
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picture of a reference card for context. It is smaller and punier in every
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possible way. Because of this, you will need to make sure that your system is
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capable of containing the greatness of the GTX 780 Lightning. side panel fans
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could interfere with its increased height and you'll need to make sure that
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you have enough expansion slots free because due to its two plus slot cooler,
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it will take up one, two, three PCI
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slots. Now, because the card is based on the GeForce GTX 780 GPU, there are no
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real surprises in terms of normal NVIDIA graphics card features. You got support
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for SLI, 3D Vision, Fizzax, CUDA,
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G-Sync, and of course, GeForce Experience, which has now added game
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streaming to compatible devices like NVIDIA Shield. Low overhead gameplay
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recording, and Twitch live streaming to its ability to optimize your game
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settings and keep your graphics drivers all up to date and all of that good
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stuff. But that's not why you were shopping for a Lightning. Let's talk
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about what makes this card special. First up is the fact that this is a very
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non-reference PCB. It utilizes components with MSI's military class
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concept, including Dr. Moss 4, copper
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moss, high caps, new super ferite chokes, and their dark solid capacitors.
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So, unless you've got some electrical engineering under your belt, most of
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that probably sounded like gibberish. But the point is that even though the
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mil standard 810G compliance doesn't really mean much, a lightning card is
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capable of running faster, cooler, and longer than a typical reference card.
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Second is their triple force architecture. So the lightning logo on
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the top illuminates green, blue, or red depending on the load. Their twin Frozer
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cooler design has been updated to triozer with three PWM controlled
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propeller blade fans rather than two. And their power delivery system for the
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card itself has been decked out with an all digital design. Core, memory, and
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auxiliary voltage are all digital. Next
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up is the GPU reactor, which is basically like an extra PCB strapped to
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the back of a card to reduce ripple and increase power delivery to the GPU core.
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In practice, this will be way beyond irrelevant unless you're using exotic
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cooling methods, but hey, it's there. To go along with it, their V checkpoints
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allow you to easily monitor key card voltages if you're performing mods and
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want to use a dedicated multimedia rather than multimedia multimeter rather
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than software to find out how much juice you're giving to key components on the
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card. particularly when you're extreme overclocking. Their twin BIOS feature
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gives you two separate BIOS chips, which
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is good because if you can find your way to get your hands on the non-nerfed LN2
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BIOS that allows a power limit over
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109%, then uh that might be pretty useful. Now, to be clear, guys, we
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benchmarked our card assuming that end users will have to just deal with the
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stock BIOS, but trust me, there is more potential in this card if you're willing
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to get a little bit crazy. And that dual BIOS implementation means that there's
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an easy bailout switch if something goes wrong during a BIOS flash. Triple over
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voltage that is cranking up the volts to the GPU memory and PLLL is all handled
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separately because of that feature and it is fully supported by MSI's
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afterburner software. But again, it will have limited
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relevance unless you perform the BIOS flash that I was talking about a moment
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ago because that is going to hold back
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the true raw potential of this graphics
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card in a very meaningful way. So the conclusion is this. The GTX 780
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Lightning is, how you say, uh, lightning fast. We threw a few games at it from
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our usual suite of benchmarks, and while it doesn't really stand out from the
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crowd in terms of its performance, just as a reminder, guys, all of our cards
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are overclocked as high as they can go, in my opinion, it's really very
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reasonably priced. For $50 more than a reference 780 running at reference
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clocks and as little as 20 to $30 more than a normal non-reference card, if
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nothing else, you're getting better build quality and cooler operation for
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your graphics card throughout its lifetime. It's also aggressively
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overclocked out of the box at a full 133 MHz faster max boost clock than a
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reference GTX 780. and it has no difficulty hitting those numbers
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consistently while running cooler and still being satisfyingly quiet. My only
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issue with the 780 Lightning actually has nothing to do with MSI, but rather
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to do with NVIDIA. Since it was released, the 780 Lightning has been
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nerfed with that 109% power limit BIOS
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that I was talking about before versus the aggressive one that it had available
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to it at launch. This practice of NVIDIA's where non-approved card designs
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are limited puts some restraints on their partners' ability to deliver the
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best possible performance. And while I understand NVIDIA's perspective, um, and
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you know, I agree that maintaining a brand image of reliability is more
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important than three more FPS in Battlefield in general. I wish that the
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card partners and endusers were allowed
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to make their own choice and forego warranty coverage if they really want to
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push things to the limit. I mean, I guess the really extreme guys still can
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if they go and find BIOS mods, but I just wish it was a little bit easier.
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Anyway, guys, thanks for watching this
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review of the MSI GeForce GTX 780
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Lightning. Don't forget to like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you
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disliked it. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Would you spend an
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extra 20 to $50 knowing that your card's going to run cooler and it's going to
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look better and it's going to last longer, or is that not worth it to you?
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Do you upgrade so often that it doesn't really matter? And then finally, guys,
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as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.