How long left to wait for MSI 7970 Lightning models to be stocked?

I really doubt anyone here could tell you. MSI surely knows, but they're not going to share.

Have you thought about the GTX 680 instead? I know I'd prefer the 7970 myself, but it might be worth it to not overpay for an import.

Yea will is right, paying extra for a rare item is a hard thing to do when you can pay about the same for a better card

GTX 680 doesn't interest me. It's not a good card for overclocking (dynamic OC/"boost clock" is gimmicky, unnecessary, and unhelpful IMO), it's not a performance upgrade from a user overclocked 7970, GTX 680 SLI doesn't currently scale as well as 7970 CF, and it's no more available at a decent price than the card I'm looking for.

If I could get a pair of 680s for $1000, I would be very tempted to do it. But to do that, I also have to wait, especially since I would probably want 4GB models.

If I'm gonna overpay for something, it will be to get a 2nd card of one that I'm already very happy with - my Lightning 7970.

I'm kicking myself for not just ordering two of them back in March. I knew that my XFX would probably not play nice with it in crossfire and should have just bought 2 lightnings the first time around.

I'm starting to assume that the complete out of stock nature of this card means that I might have at least 2 weeks to wait before this card gets back in stock... it worries me in particular that a shop had a shipment due last week, 2 shipments due this week, and hasn't gotten the cards.

I'm thinking that something is up on MSI's end with production/volume.

Am I just paranoid, or is that a safe assumption? It's worth $250 extra to me to get the card now rather than in 2+ weeks. I'm moving at the end of May and need my rig finalized by then.

I been watching that card ...still wondering if a single one will be enough to outperform my current Crossfire HD6950's ...so far benchmark results are saying no.. but to be honest both my cards are stock OCed and the benchmarks are from a stock HD7970 ... and the MSI 7970 Lightning has a nice stock OC and nice cooling system ...so it might be enough...

Cant decide atm..

What are your heaven/3dmark11 scores on 6950 CF?

Also, I'm thinking of importing from overclockers UK - any idea if I would be able to RMA to them if I get a defective card? I know they are a reliable shop, but I have never imported anything like this before and am unsure how that works if I have to return it.

3D Mark 11:

Basic - http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3291238;jsessionid=1b385z8jc5c8v16z8l4xpejpz3

Performance - http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3291321

Extreme - http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3291358

Unigine heaven refuses to run ...probably a Windows 8 issue ..its the only OS I have installed atm.. because it runs 50% better on my Bulldozer CPU.

Cool, so Win 8 lived up to the promise of helping out Bulldozer.

I feel the same way as you do, BigMack. I wish I had just purchased two 680's when I had the chance. 1 is good, and handles non 3D Vision stuff well, but once 3D vision is on, a few games really hit me hard still.

Yeah... I'm going freakin crazy waiting.

I know that it's bat-**** crazy to spend $750 on importing a 7970, but I don't know what to make of the fact that nobody in the US seems to have any idea when the card will resurface. It also bothers me that MSI's USA sales department is just an answering machine.

I just know that the day after I spend $750, it's going to pop up on newegg back in stock at $520  

Have you considered selling the lightning and getting two other good cards?

I am starting to consider options...

Problem is, I really don't like the 680 - everything about the "boost clock" nonsense just irritates me on principle. If it were a disable-able feature and you could run/overclock the card normally, I would be far more tempted to get it.

Also, I'm pretty set on getting a custom PCB card since I would like to overclock and want the card to last. That's the main reason I'm being so picky about the Lightning - it doesn't really do anything special with respect to performance or even overclocking, but it is much less likely to have a VRM blow up in 2-3 years from running in an overclocked state.

There's some other custom 7970s that will be incoming, but that again involves waiting. And I just can't make myself like the 680... I'm trying, and I just can't. "GPU Boost" is just too insultingly stupid to me.

I didn't mean the 680. You clearly like your 7970, but I was considering a different brand/model option. Getting a 680 is just as bad as getting your lightning.

The boost thing may be gimmicky, but it doesn't hurt performance either. You just kind of have to just account for it.

Are there other 7970s that have custom VRMs etc? ASUS DCU II isn't an option because I don't want the cards to be right up against one another in crossfire so don't really want triple-slot cards.

If the Powercolor PCS+ 7970 were to show up on newegg, I might consider getting two of those and selling the lightning. (:edit: although on 2nd glance, those look like triple-slot cards as well)

Really like the performance of the Gigabyte Windforce 7970, but it's just a reference PCB  

bigmack70 I know your upset about that card not being available but you asked for benchmarks of my current Crossfire HD6950's .. but you didn't mention anything about if it would be worth it to go with the MSI 7970 Lightning whenever it finally is available ..

It has the highest clock speed out of all the cards ..and you already have 1 of the cards so I figure you were gonna show me your scores or something  

I asked MSI also a few days ago about the MSI 7970 Lightning, why it was out of stock and when they would get more..etc etc ... no response ...if I get a response ill post it here..
-----------------------------
Btw I am adding this link to my thread I already made about this that is getting almost no responses it has some other benchmarks I ran..

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/351413-33-crossfire-h...

To make going to a 7970 worthwhile, you'd need 2. Two 6950's are too close to the same performance of one 7970 to warrant an "upgrade".

Sorry didn't get time to run the benchmarks yesterday. A single 7970 is not really going to be an upgrade from 6950 CF unless you are getting poor CF scaling in games. Unless you're seeing something awful like 50% CF scaling, I don't know that the upgrade is worth it.

My Results:
Performance
Extreme

I even did some searching for you and could not find a lightning anywhere.Crazy i had an auto notify me button and a few weeks back they had them in stock and within 5-10 min they were sold out again.I wish they would make one of these in the 7950 version

Well... my patience has run out. I'm gonna import one from Overclockers UK.

Good news is that apparently they don't charge VAT on international orders, so it only winds up being about $580 for the card, which isn't terrible at all... less than I paid for my first one  .

Now I just have to get my bank to let me make an international order... lol... declined my credit card linked to my checking account because I never make international orders and it probably looks suspicious.

Best answer selected by BigMack70.

Order placed. Card will be here Wednesday  

Wow that is quick. Ordered on Saturday in England and will arrive in US on Wednesday! Was $580 just the price you paid for the card? If so how much was shipping?

I am also getting annoyed waiting for this card to be back in stock.

Wound up being $620 after shipping. It was 385 british pounds for the card + shipping. Not too bad - I paid $620 for my first lightning shipped as well from newegg.

The site quoted me Wednesday but then I checked with DHL and they don't pick up shipments on Saturday, so it won't actually get shipped till tomorrow and will actually arrive Thursday. Still pretty amazing, assuming it actually works out that way.

First time Newegg ever failed me  . Not really their fault - more MSI's fault, but still, this is the first time I've ever had to do anything like this.

I hate to do this to you but...they just came instock at 8 am (est) this morning on newegg. I was using c4c for the past 3 weeks to finnaly get my replacement third lightning ( had to rma one that was doa but was o of stock) and i tried to grab 2 but they only had one and i was lucky enough to get the last one. I dont know how many there were instock but they sold out in litteraly 4 minutes and 21 seconds ...acording to my c4c which is insane....but yes i got one

Yeah that's what I figured... kind of why I wasn't too worried about doing the import.

I was literally losing sleep before I ordered this card, because I was trying to always be at the computer watching my c4c on that page. It was driving me insane, so I figured I'm fine paying $100 for my sanity even if it's just for a few days.

Honestly, I had expected to pay $600 anyways for the card. It was a nice bonus when AMD/MSI/newegg dropped prices, but obviously I'm not too concerned about price/performance at this moment.

i hear ya man. Honestly, if i knew 3 weeks ago i could import from ocuk without the vat (i had saw they have 10+ in stock but i figured they didnt ship internationally and it would be super expensive) i would have bought one that second. so i am actually feeling quite dumb for not doing that lol.

as a suggestion for c4c so you are not going out of your mind waiting to hear David Bowie sing to you, just go to c4c's vip page, donate $3, and set up your email so it will alert you when a change is recorded. I did this and have grabbed numerous rare cards (iv been getting into ln2 so i wanted the lightnings and 680's as my test subjects lol) even while i am at work. Having any smartphone obviously is needed for the push email; but i highly advise you do this to save yourself a bit of sanity (since you can put the phone next to ur ear when you go to sleep while ur comp runs c4c) this is how i got it this morning.

Yup I would have ordered this card weeks ago from OCUK if I knew they didn't charge VAT and if I had known that they would get the order here in under a week. I didn't find that out until I got irritated enough that I decided to place the order anyways, and then found out on the checkout page that VAT was not being charged.

Any time I'm around a computer, I've had c4c up and running the last two weeks... refreshing that newegg page ever 30 seconds. Having email notification wouldn't have helped me stay sane  

well i am glad we both will not lose anymore sleep because of this damn shortage from msi lol. it still blows my mind how the usa has absolutely no stock anywhere while every other place around the world has more than they can sell. shows how well their distribution manager knows their own products and demand for them...

Yeah no question this was a screw up by MSI because pretty much everywhere in Europe has tons of them.

I don't know how ordering those from the manufacturer works, so I suppose it's also possible that it was a screw up by the US retailers for underestimating demand and not ordering enough cards, too.

I'd be very curious to hear how they do on LN2... I'm pretty convinced that these cards are not binned for air overclocking, but I am curious if they are binned for sub-zero OCs.

i am just waiting on 3 ln2 pots to arrive this week and once they do ill throw some numbers up for you. only one out of the 2 working ones i got seems well binned (asic of 85.7 %, 1050 stock volt works up to 1175 mhz with no voltage adjustments) the other is at 67% asic so 1175v and needs 1200 to hit 1150 mhz. hopefully the next one coming in is another high asic chip. i had hoped to get 2 today so i could have sold the weakest of the 4 and had 3 with reasonably close asic scores as i am going to ln2 3 lightnings while ln2ing my 3960x for benchmarks. I will also be buying the ek waterblocks once they have a release date as well once im done destroying them with 1.6v lol

Isn't lower asic better for sub-zero overclocking? My card has 78% asic and does 1225 MHz on 1.22V. Haven't been able to get it stable any higher than that, no matter what I've tried - nothing crashes but I get crazy artifacting (once I see bad artifacting, I stop whatever bench/test I'm running, so I'm assuming that it would crash eventually).

It's weird, because even if I just increase voltage but not the clock speed, I get artifacting. I'm not sure I really understand it... part of me wonders if some sort of OCP is kicking in and that it may be worth trying the unlocked BIOS, but I dunno... I'm a bit nervous about that.

well theoretically, with lower asic you have more leakage thus more volts flying through the entire chip. Since ln2 can take care of the heat from the leakage, your main problem would be voltage consistency throughout the chip (something you cant really control) so what ends up happening is you need more voltage (thus the higher stock voltage) to keep a consistent clock. it is the opposite for higher asic/lower stock voltage. What tends to happen is if we were to plot out each cards stats on a graph, somewhere the two lines (cards) voltages/clocks will cross (id say around 1500 core clock) now, what many people believe is that the lower asic will prevail because of the extra leaked voltage that actually helps you attain higher clocks at those speeds/temps since temperature would be the only fixable problem. I have not gone and dis proven this personally, but talking to many ln2'ers, the higher asic is actually better in the end because the silicon itself provides a more consistent delivery of power, whether its higher or lower voltage, so those chips can handle the highest voltages (1.6+) more successfully and in the end, provide better overclocks (though they will most likely take more voltage to reach the highest overclocks)

honestly, asic is a small piece of the puzzle, its all about the nano sized channels of silicon and how well they are structured in the chip itself. This is why the lighting goes to strides to condition the voltage prior to reaching the gpu (and why they achieved a 1800 mhz clock as apposed to the 1700 previous record). the more consistent of power he chip uses and produces, the better chance you have, thus why i believe higher asic is truly better than lower when using ln2.


wow that was way more complicated to explain that i had hoped lol.

Makes sense. Any thoughts as to why merely increasing voltages without increasing clock speeds can introduce visual artifacting? Doesn't seem normal to me... I thought that the only problem extra voltage could introduce was extra heat.

im assuming you have the powertune slider set at 20%. it really just comes down to the silicon. i know that a lame reason but it difficult to say what could help you over that hurdle. is your stock voltage set at 1175? if so, on bios 1, the max u can set it to is 1.3v. If you want to experiment a bit, lower your clock to 1125, pull the voltage to 1.3, and see what happens, if its stable, slowly raise your clocks until you see artifacts again (without burning your card).

The reason i say max out the voltage is because there is a wall you will hit that you can get over sometimes. yours seems to be 1.22v and what i have seen is it may not work from lets say 1.22 to 1.25 but then 1.255 works like a charm.

if you have the patience as well. At 1225, increase from 1.22 by the smallest interval you can until you can become stable again at higher volts.

Max voltage I can set on bios 1 is 1.35V and yeah I have the powertune set to +20%. I think my default voltage is 1.112v, at least that's what afterburner defaults to... I can't figure out how to enable AB to read actual voltages rather than target voltages in order to check.

I'll keep playing around with it... I couldn't push my XFX DD BE 7970 past about 1.22 volts either, but it would just crash - thought possibly the VRMs were overheating on that card when stressed like that (it too was a 1.112v GPU, never checked its asic).

o ok that makes sense actually. if ur chip is 1.12v stock, then your max theoretical is 1.27v on bios one (the bios itself is locked to .125mv over voltage from your stock voltage). and if you look at your afterburner voltage when running a game or benchmark, you will notice it compensates for vdroop by .012v. so, when you have your voltage set to 1.22 your actual voltage is 1.232 which is right up on your max allowed voltage on bios one. So what i am assuming is happening is your hitting the bios's voltage limit it and may be throttling you or somthing. I dont know exactly what the bios does when hitting this limit, but it must be locking you down when you hit or go over it. The ln2 switch wont hurt anything, all it does is release these thresh holds and allow you not to get slammed by your voltage limit.

sry got the numbers wrong but i think you got the idea the first time.

Wow if that's true then that's an incredibly helpful piece of information! Do you know if it voids the warranty on the Lightning if you switch the BIOS?

na no warranty void. even if something horrific happened (which it wont) you could just flip the switch back anyway and they wouldnt know the difference. Just like a cpu, there is no way for them to tell what ur settings were when you fried your chip.

literally the only thing flipping the switch does is change the bios maximum thresh holds and apparently loosens the timing of the memory. i discovered the loosened mem timings by running the same clocks a voltages on both bios' and noticing that i actually had a LOWER 3dmark11 score with ln2 bios. www.pcper.com in their review discovered the same thing actually, quite interesting to do urself. I assume they loosed them to help achieve as high a memory clock as possible, but with my two cards in crossfire, i can hit 1850 memory at 1.62v (needs 1.65 to play games) without any problems on bios one so who knows lol

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