MSI Officially Launches GeForce GTX 780 Lightning Card

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+.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • nikoli707
    would like to see this card at the $499 price point, other than that, nice job msi
    Reply
  • therogerwilco
    Oh man, I gotta clean my monitor now
    Reply
  • xerxces
    therogerwilco , August 30, 2013 11:14 AM
    Oh man, I gotta clean my monitor now

    Ease up on the porn and your monitor would not be so dirty.
    Reply
  • rolli59
    Nice card but really expensive and overkill for single 1080P monitor gaming.
    Reply
  • Ryan Klug
    Ethan's mom makes $82 / hr laying on her back.
    Reply
  • The_One_and_Only
    Too expensive for what should a $550 card. Lame
    Reply
  • 17seconds
    Too expensive when the Galaxy Hall of Fame card is available for $690.

    If you own one of these, be sure to use the special version of Afterburner and also update your LN2 BIOS with the new version that allows a 300% power limit.
    Reply
  • Kitsone0
    Are they even trying on the OC?
    Obviously MSI doesn't think they need to compete price-wise with others either.
    Reply
  • soldier44
    Was waiting on this card to be announced back on Aug 7th but it never happened so I got the EVGA 780 classified instead and couldn't be happier. It doubled the fps in all my games at 2560 x 1600 coming from a 580. You have to pay to play.
    Reply
  • soldier44
    11452450 said:
    Nice card but really expensive and overkill for single 1080P monitor gaming.

    There are some of us that game alot higher than 1080p. 1080p is not even in our vocabulary. Stick with the 770 and below.
    Reply