MSI is a name which has been present in India for a very long time now, along side ASUS and Gigabyte, especially when it comes to motherboards. Slowly and steadily, as its competitors have evolved their product lineup, they are doing the same. Their new “Lightning Series” of graphics cards may not register with all but I can tell you that it will soon if they keep up the great work they have done with the same.



What I am presenting here on their behalf today is something I expected a long time ago from MSI. MSI in past 2-3 years have come up with one of the best factory overclocked cards. Higher clock speeds than reference cards, greater OCing headroom and low failure rate is nothing short of commendable. Call me biased if you like but the first time i went extreme cooling on a GPU was with a MSI 8800GT OC edition and was able to run tests at 950MHz to 1000MHz under LN2 with vGPU-mod. So I do believe that they make good cards. With "Lightning Series" what they decided to do is up the game, for themselves and everyone else, with complete redesigns and using the best components out there.



Enough talk. Let the pictures speak!

[BREAK=Pictures]

[BREAK=Specification]



The MSI NGTX275 Lightning specification:

Originally Posted by MSI

Graphics Engine

GeForce GTX 275

Bus Standard

PCI Express x16 2.0

Memory Type

GDDR3

Memory Size(MB)

1792

Memory Interface

448bit

Core Clock Speed(MHz)

700

Memory Clock Speed(MHz)

2300

Memory Bandwidth(GB/sec)

130.0

Texture Fill Rate(billion/sec)

53.3

DVI Output

1

D-SUB Output

1

TV-Output

N/A

HDMI-Output

1

VIVO(Video-in/out)

N/A

HDTV Support

N/A

HDCP Support

Y

HDMI Support

Y

Dual-link DVI

Y

Display Ouput(Max Resolution)

2560x1600

RAMDACs

400

DirectX Version Support

10.0

OpenGL Version Support

3.0

CrossFire Support

N/A

SLI Support

Y

3-way SLI

Y

HyperMemory Tech.

N/A

TurboCache tech.

N/A

GPU Features

‧2nd Generation NVIDIA® Unified Architecture

‧PhysX Ready

‧3-way NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology

‧Microsoft® DirectX 10 Support

‧NVIDIAR CUDA™ Technology

‧PCI Express 2.0 Support

‧GigaThread™ Technology

‧NVIDIAR Lumenex™ Engine

‧16x Anti-aliasing Technology

‧128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR) Lighting

‧OpenGL® 3.0 Optimization and Support

‧Dual-link DVI Support

‧NVIDIAR PureVideo™ HD Technology

‧Discrete, Programmable Video Processor

‧Dual-stream Hardware Acceleration

‧Dynamic Contrast Enhancement & Color Stretch

‧HDCP Capable

Some features of the MSI card:



Military Class

• Hi-c CAP(Highly-Conductive Capacitor)

-Tantalum Core

-Rare metal, incredibly stable

-Extremely high conductivity

-Stabilize GPU power, better overclocking

-Used on space shuttles and satellites

• SSC (Solid State Choke)

-Pure Iron Core

-New generation, form-in-one choke

-No buzz noise

-Higher maximum current output

-Better protection of power surge

-Designed for overclocking• Solid Capacitor

-Aluminum Core

-10 years ultra long lifetime

-No explosion

-Extreme low ESR

-Lower temperature

-Higher efficiency



True 10 Phase PWM

• Incomparable Power Design

- GPU consumes more power than hi-end CPU.

- 10 Phase PWM provides the best quality of power supply to GPU and memory.

• For Overclocking and Stability

- To break the impossible overclocking record needs unusual power supply.

- A must when extreme overclockers use liquid nitrogen.

• Plus Military Class components to improve stability furthermore. <LI style="MARGIN: 8px 0px">APS(Active Phase Switching)



• MSI exclusive power-saving technology for graphics card and motherboard

• Fully automatically adjust PWM phase based on GPU/Memory loading

Work on any OS (Windows, Linux…)

• Maintain over 90% efficiency under all loading, up to 93%

• Save 66576W* per year



Overclocking Features



Lightning Afterburner

• Dedicated utility for N275/N260GTX Lightning

• Adjust GPU Voltage, GPU/Memory Clock, Fan Speed

• Show Clock/Voltage/Fan Speed information in 3D Games

• Preset profiles (Game & Power Saving) for different scenarios

• Users can save their setting in 3 different profiles

• Hotkeys for in-game Clock/Fan speed control



V-Check Points

• Lightning series has built-in voltage measurement points

• Get accurate voltage of GPU and Memory on the fly

• Additional cables hold multimeter probes

MSI NGTX275 Lightning





[BREAK=Setup]



Core i7 975 [provided by Intel]

ASUS P6T-Deluxe

G.Skill Ripjaw 6GB @ 1333 [7-7-7-24]

7200.10 250GB

MSI NGTX275 Lightning

ASUS ENGTX295

ASUS ENGTX260 MATRIX*

Dell 24"

Silverstone DA1000

TRUE-120 for Processor and stock cooling for Graphics Card.



OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

Driver: ForceWare 191.07



All tests were conducted thrice and the average scores were recorded.





* Asus ENGTX260 Matrix card had to be returned much before I could run recently released “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Benchmark”.





Note: Overclocking tests of this card are still on and I will soon update with more results.





[BREAK=3DMark Performance]





3DMarks are PC Benchmarks are designed to test the DirectX9 and DirectX10 performance of your graphics card.









3DMark05











3DMark06















3DMark Vantage







[BREAK=Gaming Performance: Batman Arkham Asylum]





After a long time, here is a superhero game that does justice to the title and has enthralled gamers worldwide, apart from just Batman fans.





















[BREAK=Gaming Performance: Crysis]





One of the most awaited and visually stunning games of the present times. Crysis brings most gaming rigs down to their knees.





























[BREAK=Gaming Performance: Far Cry 2]





A hit or miss with gamers, Far Cry 2 still stands as one of the decent games to test the gaming performance of one's system.

























[BREAK=Gaming Performance: HAWX]





Hawx - One of the best aerial combat games ever made. This graphical treat also features DX10.1 support.





























[BREAK=Gaming Performance: Resident Evil 5]





Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5 , is a survival horror video game and was preceded by a benchmark tool, that was released for both system performance evaluation as well as to test the new 3D technology which is implemented in all the cutscenes within the game.





























[BREAK=Gaming Performance: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat]





One of the most awaited titles, this is the sequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl released in 2007. This benchmark is based on one of the ingame locations – Pripyat . The testing process includes four stages, those utilizing various weather and time of the day settings (day, night, rain, bright sun).



























[BREAK=Personal Take]





I hate to repeat myself but I have no option. So here it goes





This card has everything most enthusiasts want in theirs.

- a beautifully designed and aesthetically appealing card with the “we-all-so-love” black PCB.

- excellent build quality, very good power management design and components

- great cooling with less noise, very good for an actively cooled card..

- a good software utility, MSI Afterburner, for that perfect control of gpu parameters.

- already in the GTX285 performance range and I am sure enthusiasts will explore more







Finally, I agree that the age of "DirectX 11" is here and soon we will see a solution form NVIDIA as well but this card does not disappoint when it comes to running games even at "Very High" to "Ultra" standards.





Last but not the least, many thanks to MSI Taiwan for this awesome card!!!

are you on a mission ?



great review again ! Whats the price for this ?