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MSI Not Building Maxwell-Based "Lightning" Graphics Card
By , - Source: NordicHardware.se

According to a report on NordicHardware, MSI is holding off building a Maxwell-based 'Lightning' series graphics card. Supposedly, MSI is doing so because it expects an even higher-performing Maxwell part to arrive in the near future.

The Lightning series cards from MSI are the company's extreme overclocking-oriented cards which come with extremely hefty and powerful coolers, as well as very elaborate PCB designs carrying a rather generous number of VRM phases. As a cherry on top, the GPUs are also hand-picked for more stable overclocking.

In the past, the mainstream parts carried a dual-fan cooler that closely resembled the standard TwinFrozr cooler featured on the "Gaming"-branded cards. However, the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti that were based on the more power-hungry GK110 GPU got a new Lightning cooler, called the TriFrozr, which featured three fans and a ludicrously thick heatsink. MSI's GTX 780 LightningMSI's GTX 780 Lightning

So, taking that history into account, we reason that the lower TDPs of the GTX 970 and the GTX 980 don't allow MSI to justify building a special overclocking-oriented card yet, as the "Gaming"-branded cards already overclock quite well.

MSI has confirmed that at the time of writing it has no plans for a Lightning card on Maxwell due to restrictions that Nvidia has placed on overclocking.

Might there be a more power-hungry GPU on the way? Perhaps the GM200 or a GM210? MSI claims they have nothing on the product lineup, but that doesn't rule out the possibility.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.