MSI N770 Lightning Pro Reviews

MSI’s GTX 770 Lightning is everything we could possibly want in a GPU. It is fast, quiet, cool running and, if given the chance, it should overclock to some extreme levels too. Unfortunately, MSI has kept the very overclocking abilities they pimp so hard under lock and key, tucked safely away where only a select few can access them. We’re not sure if this is being done to protect inexperienced users but it will infuriate most overclockers who are willing to pay almost anything to get the most out of their hardware. If this trend continues, NVIDIA’s Green Light could bring the market for enthusiast-friendly cards to a screeching halt. That’s really too bad since if it had followed in the overclocking footsteps of its predecessors, MSI’s GTX 770 Lightning would have received our highest recommendation.

With the culmination of the GeForce GTX TITAN, GeForce GTX 780, and now GeForce GTX 770, NVIDIA has some solid refresh options on the table for people looking to buy new video cards coming from older generations.

In our conclusion of the MSI N770 Lightning evaluation we gave major kudos to the MSI N770 Lightning. We hold onto that conclusion, it is proven even more now. We have learned that the out-of-box real-world frequency on the MSI N770 Lightning is quite high thanks to GPU Boost 2.0 and MSI's Twin Frozr IV heatsink and fan combo. The GPU boost clock is set to 1202MHz out-of-the-box, however, thanks to the super cool (temperature) GPU, GPU Boost 2.0 is able to take it to 1228MHz while gaming. At this frequency, the GPU is literally near its maximum limit of 1241MHz, just 13MHz shy. What this means for you, the gamer, is that you are getting the maximum potential of this GPU straight out-of-the-box without having to do a thing. MSI is pushing the GPU to its potential, by default. Rarely do we see such a thing happen. This means every bit of that $449 you have to spend is utilized by getting the absolute most performance possible out of this video card. The only other thing that can be pushed higher is the memory, but even at 7.8GHz that didn't' really yield a real-world benefit.

Our thoughts on the GeForce GTX 770 are somewhat mixed. On one hand, the card is clearly faster than a GeForce GTX 680, the GeForce GTX 770 is outfitted with a quieter more efficient cooler, and it offers support for NVIDIA’s GPU Boost 2.0. On the other hand, the GeForce GTX 770 behaves much like a factory overclocked GeForce GTX 680 would. There are clear distinctions between reference models, and we’d obviously consider reference GeForce GTX 770 cards to be more attractive than reference GeForce GTX 680s in virtually every respect. The lines are somewhat blurry between the custom GeForce GTX 770 cards like those from MSI and Gigabyte, though. The differences between factory overclocked GeForce GTX 680s and GeForce GTX 770s are far more difficult to spot. GeForce GTX 770 cards should be available immediately at a variety of price points. References models with 2GB of memory are expected to be priced at $399, with factory overclocked 2GB cards falling in the $410 - $450 price range. 4GB GeForce GTX 770 cards are expected to be priced about $50 higher than 2GB models, with similar increases for factory overclocked products. With GeForce GTX 680s currently selling for $400 or so and Radeon HD 7970 cards in the $370 - $440 range, NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce GTX 770 fairly well. We’d obviously prefer the GeForce GTX 770 to be even more affordable, of course, but as it stands today, the card is faster, quieter and cheaper than a GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970, so we won’t be complaining.

MSI's GeForce GTX 770 Lightning is a 1:1 clone of the GTX 680 Lightning we reviewed last year. It looks exactly the same but uses the GTX 770 GPU (it is GK104 as well) and comes with faster 7 Gbps GDDR5 memory chips that NVIDIA introduced with the GeForce GTX 770. MSI has overclocked their card out of the box with one of the largest factory overclocks available to GTX 770 cards at this time. Unfortunately, memory is not overclocked, which would have been easy given the massive headroom in our manual OC testing. As a result, the card has a 6% performance lead over the reference design when averaged over all our benchmarks. AMD's single GPU flagship, the HD 7970 GHz Edition, is 9% behind. MSI was smart to reuse their GTX 680 Lightning design to nullify R&D costs while keeping a design that we love. The cooler looks powerful and menacing thanks to the yellow highlights. The card is a bit large but should fit most cases. On the cooler we find two large fans keeping the card comfortably cool--cooler than other GTX 770 cards we tested before. Noise levels are comparable to the reference design cooler--slightly higher in idle and slightly lower under load, but the difference is small. I wish MSI had reduced noise levels a bit more by using some of the available temperature headroom, but they probably focused on lower temperatures since this card focuses on overclockers, and they might prefer such a configuration. I'm currently also testing the MSI GTX 770 GAMING that comes with greatly improved noise levels, so stay tuned. Overclocking on our sample worked very well. Better than on other GTX 770 cards, MSI's Lightning reached both highest clocks and highest overclocked performance. MSI is promoting voltage control on the Lightning but the range is extremely limited with a +0.012 V maximum increase. Definitely not worth the effort. MSI's card also comes with the GPU Reactor, an extra PCB that sits on the back of the GPU to provide additional voltage filtering. I'm not sure if it has any real effect on overclocking, but it takes up some additional space, which could become an issue on SLI with motherboards that have short slot spacing only. Most people should be fine, though.