MSI's GTX 780 Lightning graphics card is built to be the ultimate GTX 780 graphics card, and of course, as we're accustomed to from Lightning-series graphics cards from MSI, it does live up to being called Lightning. The graphics card is more powerful than a stock GTX Titan (thanks to its clock frequency), even though its GK110 GPU has fewer CUDA cores enabled, and half the memory capacity.
The card features a base clock at 980 MHz; the standard boost clock is set at 1033 MHz; the card's memory runs at 6.0 GHz and features 3 GB over a 384-bit wide memory interface. These numbers by themselves are good, but nothing that is particularly groundbreaking -- yet.
The groundbreaking part comes in the card's power management. The card has a 16+4 phase VRM circuit, which when the secondary BIOS is enabled, allows the card to reach some very impressive clock speeds. This is possible because, according to MSI, the secondary BIOS removes the restrictions, allowing the graphics card to reach much higher clock speeds. The primary BIOS does not enable the card's full potential. The card should be an overclocker's godsend.
Another very noteworthy point is the card's cooler. Known as the TriFrozr cooler, it features two larger black fans at both ends of the cooler with a smaller yellow 92 mm fan resting right in the middle. The yellow fan also has a denser fin arrangement.
Of course, there are a lot more points to make the GTX 780 Lightning a champ to consider. The card should start arriving at select retailers, and it carries an MSRP of $749.99.
Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
