MSI N680GTX Lightning Pro Reviews

MSI’s GTX 680 Lightning is built for overclockers, this market’s elitists who demand top tier parts and won’t settle for anything less. In this respect, it succeeds spectacularly and we’d even go so far as to say that it is one of the best cards that money can buy right now. From a features perspective, MSI hit all of the high notes with high quality design and attention to even the smallest details. Build quality is top notch, the dual BIOS offers a world of possibilities for serious overclockers, the new AfterBurner software is a joy to use and a 3 year warranty with Canada-based RMA services will be a boon for those of us north of the 49th parallel. In addition, the Twin Frozr IV heatsink played David to ASUS’ gigantic Goliath by beating its much larger triple slot competitor in thermal and acoustical testing. There were some surprises throughout testing as well. Lightning’s paper specifications are a bit of a fallacy since they seem to indicate it won’t perform up to the DirectCu II TOP’s level. That wasn’t the case as throughout testing, MSI’s flagship was able to consistently trade blows with the best ASUS had to offer. It even pulled ahead by a miniscule amount once everything was said and done. At first this may seem impossible but through the “magic” of NVIDIA’s GPU Boost, the Lightning’s advanced power distribution and slightly lower temperatures allowed the core to hit its maximum speed more often and for longer periods of time than its competitor. The actual difference may be minor and will be indistinguishable to end users but in our charts at least, MSI now has the fastest GTX 680 we’ve tested. But is it worthy of a $599 price on that merit alone? No.

The MSI GeForce GTX 680 Lightning is loaded with quality hardware from top to bottom. The Military Class III components provide improved stability, lower temperatures, and higher overclocking capability all while improving the lifespan of the video card. Overall the MSI GeForce GTX 680 Lightning performed very well in every game, delivering enjoyable gameplay with the highest settings available. The power consumption was not too high, and the Twin Frozr IV cooling system kept the video card cold. The price of the MSI GeForce GTX 680 Lightning was originally $600. In the last week the price has come down, and it is currently available at Newegg for $599.99 with free shipping and a free game coupon for NBA2K11. That is quite a bit more expensive than a Radeon HD 7970, costing you about $170 more. It is also about $100 more expensive than the cheapest GeForce GTX 680 for $499. That $100 price premium does buy you an excellent overclock right now, but there are also other custom video cards that will get you near that clock frequency right now. The true magic of this video card is that triple-voltage support which isn't possible due to a software delay.

The MSI GeForce GTX 680 Lightning is comprised of several high end components. The Twin Frozr IV cooling system did an exceptional job of pulling the heat off, even with 300% Power Limit. The video card also one of the fastest out-of-box operating speeds. It even went head to head with one of our fastest overclocked AMD Radeon HD 7970's and swept the floor with it. To top it all off, the MSI GeForce GTX 680 Lightning is the only GTX 680 video card that supports voltage tweaking on the market currently, which shows MSI's innovation and determination to be the best. While MSI wants to give you these options of full control over voltages with the GTX 680, however NVIDIA seems to have had different plans in mind. This generation of GPU is the first time we've seen NVIDIA be very stringent on controlling the voltage of Kepler GPUs. For example, the GTX 600 series is the first series from NVIDIA where we were not allowed to raise the voltage past GPU Boost specifications. MSI has challenged this by providing full voltage control with the Lightning video card. In the near future there may be a new BIOS delivered by NVIDIA that will change some aspects of voltage control. MSI will have to ship new Lightning cards using the updated BIOS. The problem is, we don't know exactly how that is going to affect overclocking on the Lightning yet. Even MSI doesn't know. MSI still wants to provide this unique feature, and is striving to do just that. It is currently unknown what path MSI is going to take right now to still provide this unique feature on Lightning cards. Only time will tell, but certainly MSI’s software is working with the GeForce GTX 680 Lightning.

The performance of the card was exceptional: it's the fastest single-GPU graphics card I've ever tested overall. It posted the highest scores in five of the eight benchmarks I ran, but was beaten by the XFX 7970 in Batman: Arkham City, Alien vs. Predator, and Metro 2033. AMD continues to tweak their drivers and game profiles and the performance of the 7970 and GTX680 GPUs is closer than it was when the GTX680 was introduced. Of course, NVIDIA's not standing still, either, and can improve gameplay in non-FPS ways with features like PhysX and Adaptive vSync. MSI's Lightning series of cards has always struck me as a little garish, with heat pipes seemingly bursting out of the top of the card and an extravagant fan shroud. The black and yellow color scheme clashes somewhat with the blue LED lighting on the fans and the back of the card. The construction of the card is first-rate. Unlike the reference designs, a full metal back plate provides protection for the tiny surface mount component on the back of the card. The completely custom PCB is assembled with great attention to detail.

The Lightning series from MSI never disappoints, but there's some really interesting results from the AMD HD 7970 GHz Edition. When this new AMD model is overclocked, it shows the dominance that AMD have at 2560 x 1600. Saying that, you at times see the difference is only a single FPS and when the GTX 680 does come out ahead, it's normally by more than 1 FPS. Looking at the numbers here today, though, we can see the Lightning version of the NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 does wonders to performance where a couple of times we saw ourselves able to get out of that non-playable area to a playable region thanks to the overclock on offer. For people who are on 120Hz monitors as well who want to be closer to that 120 FPS mark as well, the extra grunt on offer from the card is going to be really appreciated.

MSI has sucessfully taken the already great NVIDIA GTX 680 reference design and improved on it to give it that unique Lightning touch. Thanks to a large overclock out of the box the card is one of the fastest GTX 680 cards currently available. Its 100 MHz base clock increase can result in a 5% performance boost when compared to the NVIDIA reference design. Manual overclocking works great, too, and is paired with MSI's excellent Afterburner overclocking software. On our card, we saw the highest GTX 680 GPU clock of all our reviews, reaching 1225 MHz, which is much higher than other GTX 680s we tested so far, which usually reached in the 1150 MHz range. Memory overclocking does not work so well on the other hand, not being able to break 1800 MHz, which most other cards can do just fine. MSI's large dual-fan TwinFrozr cooler enables the card to be a dual-slot GTX 680 beast, other manufacturers need three slots here. The GTX 680 Lightning does extend beyond the top edge of the card, and the GPU reactor takes up some space on the back, so make sure it will fit your system. Noise levels of the cooler were much lower than the NVIDIA reference design, the card is the lowest noise GTX 680 together with the triple slot ASUS GT 680 DC II. However, given the low temperatures I feel like a bit less noise under load would have been possible, especially since the card is certainly not that quiet during gaming.