Early Verdict
Although we're not altogether satisfied with MSI's pricing and availability, an otherwise pristine product is absolutely convincing. In the German version of our review, which went live back in August, the Lightning Z card earned a rare Editor's Choice award. It's that good. But we can no longer confer that honor with so many other 1080 Tis out there readily available under $800.
Pros
- +
High factory GPU Boost frequency
- +
Very good thermal solution
- +
Quiet fans
- +
Hardly any coil whine
- +
Lots of RGB effects to choose from
- +
External sensors
Cons
- -
Power consumption
- -
Near non-existent availability
- -
Inaccessible pricing
- -
Very heavy
- -
High starting fan pulse
- -
High power consumption
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Features & Specifications
MSI's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z is a limited-edition flagship designed to show what the company's engineers can do. The result is an almost 1.7-kilogram behemoth that needs three expansion slots worth of space to deliver high-end air cooling.
The stock specifications that MSI cites may as well be a footnote. Anyone buying such an overbuilt thermal solution surely plans to overclock anyway. So, even though a base 1607 MHz and GPU Boost frequency of 1721 MHz in Lightning Mode already sounds aggressive, we're anticipating more.
Indeed, a high factory-set power target of 300W, in combination with binned GPUs (according to MSI) and top-end cooling guarantees high clock rates under load in real gaming workloads. In addition, MSI overclocks its GDDR5X memory a bit, which should help at high resolutions with anti-aliasing enabled.
Since the actual performance of any third-party card depends on the GPU Boost frequency it can sustain, and thus on cooling, power limits, and processor quality, any review that relies on bar charts is little more than a snapshot of a single specimen. That's why we're putting our emphasis on the actual implementation of each model. To that end, a lot of equipment goes into thoroughly documenting a graphics card's behaviors. If you'd like a peek at what goes into such an evaluation, check out our Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Review. It makes for a good baseline on which MSI builds.
Unboxing, Dimensions & Interfaces
MSI does bundle a number of accessories with its GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z, including a real three-slot bracket in matte black, various color highlights that allow for a bit of customization, and a selection of connectors for voltage monitoring.
Exterior
MSI employs a matte, graphite-colored plastic cover that's quite angular in appearance. Yet it's still fairly conservative as far as high-end graphics hardware goes. Those highlights can be changed out to taste; you also get a gold, red, and carbon-fiber-like set to match other components in your PC.
The milky-white plastic inlay provides RGB lighting on the front and back, which you can control through a phone-based app or MSI's Gaming App software. If you have other compatible components installed, their colors and effects can be synchronized. We don't mind the extra bit of flair, even if it does push the upper bounds of classy-looking.
The cooling fins are installed vertically, meaning heated air is pushed up, out the top and down, toward your motherboard. Three auxiliary eight-pin power connector line the card's top edge. They're rotated by 180° so the connector release mechanisms aren't trapped up against heat sink.
The complement of two DisplayPort 1.4-ready connectors, one dual-link DVI-D output, and two HDMI 2.0 ports reflect a growing acceptance of VR HMDs (which use HDMI) and the gradual phasing out of DVI. Of those five interfaces, a maximum of four can be used simultaneously in a multi-monitor setup.
A GPU-Z screenshot provides the most pertinent technical information, even if the GPU Boost values we observed were much higher than MSI's official specifications.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | NvidiaTitan X (Pascal) | NvidiaGeForce GTX 1080 Ti FE | MSIGTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z | NvidiaGeForce GTX 1080 FE | NvidiaGeForce GTX 980 Ti |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | GP102 | GP102 | GP102 | GP104 | GM200 |
| CUDA Cores | 3584 | 3584 | 3584 | 2560 | 2816 |
| Base Frequency | 1417 MHz | 1480 MHz | 1582 MHz | 1607 MHz | 1000 MHz |
| Boost Frequency | 1531 MHz+ | 1582 MHz+ | 1695 MHz | 1733 MHz+ | 1076 MHz+ |
| Memory Size & Type | 12GB GDDR5X | 11GB GDDR5X | 11GB GDDR5X | 8GB GDDR5X | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Die Size | 471 mm² | 471 mm² | 471 mm² | 314 mm² | 601 mm² |
| Process Technology | 16nm | 16nm | 16nm | 16nm | 28nm |
| Transistors | 12 billion | 12 billion | 12 billion | 7.2 billion | 8 billion |
| Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) | 28 | 28 | 28 | 20 | 22 |
| GFLOPS (Base Clock) | 10,157 | 10,609 | 11,340 | 8,228 | 5,632 |
| Texture Units | 224 | 224 | 224 | 160 | 176 |
| Texture Fill Rate | 317.4 GT/s | 331.5 GT/s | 354.4 GT/s | 257.1 GT/s | 214 GT/s |
| ROPs | 96 | 88 | 88 | 64 | 96 |
| Pixel Fill Rate | 136 GPix/s | 130.24 GPix/s | 139.2 GPix/s | 114.2 GPix/s | 116.7 GPix/s |
| Memory Data Rate | 10Gb/s | 11Gb/s | 11Gb/s | 10Gb/s | 7Gb/s |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 352-bit | 352-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 480 GB/s | 484.4 GB/s | 489.3 GB/s | 320 GB/s | 336 GB/s |
| L2 Cache | 3MB | 2816KB | 2816KB | 2MB | 3MB |
| TDP | 250W | 250W | 300W (PT) | 180W | 250W |
Test System & Measurement Methods
We explained our test system and methodology in How We Test Graphics Cards. If you want to learn more about the procedures we're using in today's review, have a look at that story. In the time since it was published, we also upgraded our CPU and cooling system to rule out any possible host processing bottlenecks.
Here's a short summary in table-form to provide a quick overview:
| Test System | |
|---|---|
| System | Intel Core i7-6900K @ 4.3 GHzMSI X99S XPower Gaming TitaniumCorsair Vengeance DDR4-32001x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System SSD)2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)be quiet Dark Power Pro 11, 850W PSUWindows 10 Pro (All Updates) |
| Cooler | Alphacool Eisblock XPXAlphacool Eiszeit 2000 Chiller2x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 PWM (Closed Case Simulation)Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (Used when Switching Coolers) |
| Case | Lian Li PC-T70 with Extension Kit and ModsConfigurations: Open Benchtable, Closed Case |
| Monitor | Eizo EV3237-BK |
| Power Intake | Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card)Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply CableDirect Voltage Measurement at Power Supply2x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function4x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA - 30A, 100kHz, DC)4x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500MHz)1x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function |
| Thermography | 1x Optris PI640 80Hz Infrared Camera + PI ConnectReal-Time Infrared Monitoring and Recording |
| Acoustics | NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File, Low Cut at 50Hz)Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)Creative X7, Smaart v.7Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H)Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cmNoise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA)Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise |
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