MSI N780 Lightning Pro Reviews

If you don't ever overclock the card, you can still feel happy with the fact that you're buying what is probably one of the best quality GTX 780s on the market that is going to perform extremely well out of the box. Testing the model, though, does certainly wet our taste buds as we wait to see what AMD is going to bring to the table over the next several weeks. Stay tuned!

The Lightning is an amazing benchmarkers card with everything including the kitchen sink thrown in. This card simply bleeds innovation and stands waiting for the next splash of LN2 to set its pace.

We have a lot of good to say about the MSI GeForce GTX 780 LIGHTNING, and then we have one negative which holds us back a bit. First the good. We think the MSI GeForce GTX 780 LIGHTNING video card is one of the best built, and most sturdy GeForce GTX 780 video cards on the market. We commend MSI and its engineering team for developing this video card for gaming and hardware enthusiasts. It is simply the most well built GTX 780, and in our opinion is "better" in that regard compared to the GALAXY GeForce GTX 780 HOF. MSI has designed this video card with nothing but the best hardware, on all fronts. Just check the introduction page and the PDF presentation to learn how detailed MSI concentrated and focused on each component of the video card. The new LIGHTNING heatsink and fan designed, compared to the older LIGHTNING design, is much more appealing than it used to be. The re-design is more visually appealing, and more efficient. The three fan design with two fan zones is unique and allows customization of fan noise and temperature in a unique way. The program offered to set the two fan zones is visual and extremely easy to use. We have achieved the highest overclock ever on a GeForce GTX 780 based video card with the MSI GeForce GTX 780 LIGHTNING. We got ours up to 1.33GHz at a low 1.87v, compared to the 1.2v to achieve 1.3GHz on the HOF. A lower voltage will help the video card to last longer, run cooler, and demand less power. We also had the advantage of being able to overvolt the memory and Aux voltage. We got the memory up to 6.7GHz versus 6.3GHz on the HOF. Don't underestimate memory overclocking, it can help these video cards especially when you are running at 1.3GHz GPU frequency. We found the MSI GTX 780 LIGHTNING to be overall more power efficient.

Out of the box, MSI's GTX 780 Lightning is faster than the much more expensive GTX Titan, thanks to its generous factory overclock. Compared to the reference design GTX 780, we see an eight percent performance improvement. While it is not the highest clocked GTX 780 on the market, it certainly sits at the upper end of the spectrum. I only wish MSI had overclocked the memory too, as there is plenty of headroom to do so. MSI's new cooler design comes with three fans, two of which are dependent on GPU temperature. The fan in the middle is based on PWM temperature. This approach should provide additional flexibility in keeping the card cool. The cooler itself is quite powerful with seven heatpipes, but requires a little bit more than two slots. MSI's GPU reactor on the back of the card also adds to its thickness, so you must absolutely plan on three slots for SLI usage (a sufficiently long SLI bridge is included). The included backplate adds to the card's look and feel, and will provide additional protection during handling.