MSI N480GTX Lightning Video Card Review

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FrgMstr

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MSI N480GTX Lightning Video Card Review - MSI has launched its flagship custom GeForce GTX 480 video card! The MSI N480GTX Lightning is here to give Fermi fans their Extreme Overclocking fix with its special LN2 features and military class hardware. Does it stand above the average GeForce GTX 480? How far does it outperform the now more than a year old ATI Radeon HD 5870? We'll find out with the help of five of today's hottest games!
 
As a result, we were unable to take advantage of some of the more advanced OC features. MSI claims to have achieved an overclock of 1425MHz on the GPU using LN2, and while we have no truck with that claim, we also have no way to even come close to that using air cooling
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As that the word that's intended?

Outside of that, holy shit 920Mhz?! That's 32% over stock!

Also, F1 2010, is that GPU memory speed limited or CPU limited in your opinion?
 
Kyle, I noticed that on the F1 2010 Apples to Apples graph, you have the Geforce 480 listed twice, instead of the 5870. Not that big of deal, though.

Otherwise it looks like a nice marketing gimmick...
 
the csaa vs msaa stuff is really starting to confused me. good god 640W????? that would probably crush my crappy PSU.
 
"For the NVIDIA based video cards, we are using the ForceWare 260.89 WHQL driver from NVIDIA’s web site. For the ATI Radeon HD 5670, we are using Catalyst 10.10 WHQL driver."

second page under video card config typo should be HD 5870 :p



good review.. well until i saw this part " We can’t find it up for sale anywhere right now, but MSI says that it should be at $549 USD when it does land this week.". some ones smokin crack if they think this cards going to sell at that price even with all the high end components.
 
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This review just confirmed again why I will never get a GTX 480. Those power numbers... good heavens! *shudder*. 47 W at IDLE? Thats about as much as one of my 5750 AT LOAD!!! My whole overclocked PC probably uses less than just the card at load.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
good review.. well until i saw this part " We can’t find it up for sale anywhere right now, but MSI says that it should be at $549 USD when it does land this week.". some ones smokin crack if they think this cards going to sell at that price even with all the high end components.
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Perhaps, but unless we see otherwise once it lands, we can only go on what the manufacturer tells us.
 
Flyinfinni said:
This review just confirmed again why I will never get a GTX 480. Those power numbers... good heavens! *shudder*. 47 W at IDLE? Thats about as much as one of my 5750 AT LOAD!!! My whole overclocked PC probably uses less than just the card at load.
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It's also pushing a hell of a lot more power than your whole overclocked PC loaded. That's a 30% overclock over a stock 480. Hell, that thing is faster than the rumors about the upcoming 580 or the 6970.
 
vengence said:
It's also pushing a hell of a lot more power than your whole overclocked PC loaded. That's a 30% overclock over a stock 480. Hell, that thing is faster than the rumors about the upcoming 580 or the 6970.
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yeah but did the 30% overclock equate to a 30% gain in performance? no. so you increased your power usage by 150w just to gain 17% of performance in mafia II, 14% in civ 5 and 2.7% in F1 2010.
 
vengence said:
It's also pushing a hell of a lot more power than your whole overclocked PC loaded. That's a 30% overclock over a stock 480. Hell, that thing is faster than the rumors about the upcoming 580 or the 6970.
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Well, it looks to be ~15-20% faster than a GTX480, so it might be CLOSE to the 580/6970 with that overclock, but I bet the 6970 (and to a lesser extent the 580) will do that with alot less power/heat. So if I were in the market for a card with that much performance, I'd be waiting another month or two so I don't have to buy a power-plant. lol ;-) Nice performance, but too late and too power hungry IMO with both the 580 and 6970 almost here.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
yeah but did the 30% overclock equate to a 30% gain in performance? no. so you increased your power usage by 150w just to gain 17% of performance in mafia II, 14% in civ 5 and 2.7% in F1 2010.
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F1 is pretty pointless indicater as they are running at 2560x1600 and 8X AA with insane frame rates.

If you want a low power card, go buy a HTPC card and underclock the hell out of it. I have never, and probably will never care much about preformance per watt when I'm looking at (currently) the worlds fastest single GPU card.

Flyinfinni said:
Well, it looks to be ~15-20% faster than a GTX480, so it might be CLOSE to the 580/6970 with that overclock, but I bet the 6970 (and to a lesser extent the 580) will do that with alot less power/heat. So if I were in the market for a card with that much performance, I'd be waiting another month or two so I don't have to buy a power-plant. lol ;-) Nice performance, but too late and too power hungry IMO with both the 580 and 6970 almost here.
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No question I'll agree the 580/6970 are going to be less power, and both will be able to overclock which will put them ahead of this card. The card is seriously impressive, it's just months late.
 
After reading through the review and looking at the performance, it seems like this card out of the box barely outperforms the stock 480GTX. It looks like it did better with Mafia II, but otherwise could only improve 1-5 fps over the reference card in other games and actually performed worse than the reference card in BFBC2 at 2560x1600. Overclocking seemed to average ~2% in most games and ~17% in one specific game (Mafia II).

I'm sure this is a fine card and have always been happy with MSI products, but I think you really need to look closer at what you give out awards for. This cards offers no more than lackluster performance improvements out of the box against reference cards or the competing product and a significant improvement in one specific game when overclocked, yet we have a silver 'H' awarded.

In my opinion, I think you need to revist your award criteria. In the meantime, head on over to the local Home Depot and visit the pluming section with some silver H's. I'm sure many of the toilets on display represent better ways to flush $100. Better yet suggest a SLI/CF alternative that makes better use of the dollars.
 
FarWest said:
After reading through the review and looking at the performance, it seems like this card out of the box barely outperforms the stock 480GTX. It looks like it did better with Mafia II, but otherwise could only improve 1-5 fps over the reference card in other games and actually performed worse than the reference card in BFBC2 at 2560x1600. Overclocking seemed to average ~2% in most games and ~17% in one specific game (Mafia II).
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Actually it averaged 17% better, and was only 2% better in 1 game. Something that from the looks of the settings is because it's not shader limited in the least.

I'm sure this is a fine card and have always been happy with MSI products, but I think you really need to look closer at what you give out awards for. This cards offers no more than lackluster performance improvements out of the box against reference cards or the competing product and a significant improvement in one specific game when overclocked, yet we have a silver 'H' awarded.

In my opinion, I think you need to revist your award criteria. In the meantime, head on over to the local Home Depot and visit the pluming section with some silver H's. I'm sure many of the toilets on display represent better ways to flush $100. Better yet suggest a SLI/CF alternative that makes better use of the dollars.
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It has a MUCH better cooler that runs cooler and quiter. It's also got much more overclocking head room than any 480 I've ever seen.
 
Wow, great review.

If I was in the market for a GTX 480 right now, this card would be #1 on my list due to the cooling solution. It would be nice to see more video cards utilize a more custom cooling solution as it scares me when I see a graphics card hitting as hot as standard 480's hit. The fact that they were able to keep this thing in the 70's is incredible.

However it looks like this card dumps the hot air right back into the case rather than exhausting it out the back. I don't think I even want to know what it will do to your case if you were to SLI a pair of these inside a case.
 
You could probably get better performance from two 6870's in Cross Fire for $480.00, with less power and heat output.
 
I would be scared as hell to be buying a new video card right now. Im waiting for the new 5970 replacement.
 
King Icewind said:
Kyle, I noticed that on the F1 2010 Apples to Apples graph, you have the Geforce 480 listed twice, instead of the 5870. Not that big of deal, though.

Otherwise it looks like a nice marketing gimmick...
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Did not touch this one, all Brent and Mark.
 
FarWest said:
In my opinion, I think you need to revist your award criteria. In the meantime, head on over to the local Home Depot and visit the pluming section with some silver H's. I'm sure many of the toilets on display represent better ways to flush $100. Better yet suggest a SLI/CF alternative that makes better use of the dollars.
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Your thoughts are noted.
 
its a hundred bucks more then a regular 480GTX. and they are a hundred dollars more then a 5870. heat, power, cost, and price. I can see a few people getting this card for the number one slot. MSI is on a design streak here as of late. Still this card is a lot like the Ares card, going to be for bragging rights
 
FarWest said:
In my opinion, I think you need to revist your award criteria. In the meantime, head on over to the local Home Depot and visit the pluming section with some silver H's. I'm sure many of the toilets on display represent better ways to flush $100. Better yet suggest a SLI/CF alternative that makes better use of the dollars.
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actually I was thinking that this rated a gold award. remember the intention of this card is NOT the bang for the buck but for an OCing card and in that view it did damn good. I wonder if they should have taken anything off for the price as this is obviously meant for a different market then gaming. (you don't include a special BIOS for liquid nitrogen cooling on a gaming card)

yes, a pair of 6870 would be cheaper and faster but this card is pretty well awesome non the less. and to be able to handle that sort of wattage and cool it is pretty damn impressive engineering
 
I wonder how many dummies will buy this for nearly the same cost as the 5970 replacement?
 
If I were considering a GTX 480 now, this would be worth $100 extra in my book:

review said:
About the best thing I can say about a video card’s fan noise is simply "I didn’t notice it." And that is definitely the case with the MSI N480GTX Lightning. Whereas the stock NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 cooling device generates enough sound to warrant comparisons to a hair dryer, the MSI N480GTX Lightning was quietly hushed. There was no whine from whirring motors, and no racket of rushing air. Until I manually increased the fan speed to at least 75%, the fans were simply unnoticeable.
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Nice touch by MSI. :)
 
piscian18 said:
Any further 3rd party revisions of the GTX480 seem like a waste at this point.
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It won't be for those who needs high-end nVidia card..

unless somehow GTX 580 magically shows up from nowhere...which is impossible for the next few month..
 
Good informative review as always. But not too keen on the conclusion especially the "silver" award.

This card is just slightly faster than the stock GTX480, in fact it scores less (or equal) in the apples to apples comparision in some areas than a stock 480GTX. Sure some luck plays into the FPS results, but it's not really dominating the stock card (which you can overclock as well).

Neither is it a technology breakthrough.

Nor is it a price/performance breakthrough.

It's not especially "exotic" either. The conclusion says the card is for the ultra-enthusiast (with loads of money), if that was the case, I'd respect that. I quite enjoy reading about super-cars I can't afford and if a reviewer says a $500k Ferrari is "something special" and deserves an award, that's fair. Or the GPU equivalent. But this card, while a nice card, isn't anything special. It's not, say, a limited edition custom redesigned $1500+ "one of a kind" dual card like Asus tried to do with their previous Mars cards. It's a nice card but no bragging rights and nothing really special.

And the timing is wrong. Perhaps depends on people's subjective definition of "ultra-enthusiats", but my view is these guys want the "latest greatest" tech, the fastest hardware, and money takes third (or fourth) priority over power (and bragging rights, even if no one admits it). So if this card came out a few months ago, perhaps the silver award would be justified and this would be "the" card to get for these guys. But not now. I can't see many of these guys upgrading their expensive rigs to what is, from this perspective, almost obsolete technology.
 
Hold up a second...

Lightning II, you say? I don't think those curves match...
10ct9j9.jpg

Looks more like an F-22, if I do say so myself...
2cdwz8k.jpg

If I remember correctly, there was some anticipation about the F-22's official designation before they finally went with Raptor. And if memory serves, Lightning II (an homage to the Lockheed P-38 Lightning) was kicked around quite a bit (I think there might have actually been some flight sims that used that appellation), so it's easy to see where they might have gotten confused.
 
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I think you had some of your reference GTX 480 results switched with the MSI Lightning results (F1 2010 being one of them).

That being said, I don't think a GTX 480 in any flavor is worth it. You're paying $100 more than an HD 5870 for very little gains, depending on your benchmark/game.
 
...an advanced type of capacitor featuring very high capacitance ratings and very low impedance ratings.
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Impedance is a function of capacitance, so at first this sentence reads a little strange.

Actually, the capacitors in question (made by NEC) have high capacitance and very low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance), which is a component of the capacitor's impedance. The difference is worth noting because ESR is non-reactive but does have other effects like becoming a thermal source.

Tantalum capacitors can be leaky though. It's a trade-off.
 
Darksword said:
You could probably get better performance from two 6870's in Cross Fire for $480.00, with less power and heat output.
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Definitely a smarter choice for price/performance unless you had to have 5760x1200 which would need 2 5870/6970/470/580s for smooth gameplay.
 
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A few details:
- The aircraft pictured isn't the F-35, but its prototype the X-35. Distinguishing feature is that F-35 has the body bulging out below the wings (to carry a larger internal weapons load than the X-35), clearly visible past the air intakes.

- The high quality components of this Lightning card is great if you want it to keep running for 20 years or more. Regular components can't be relied upon for more than about a decade...
Great for applications where technical longevity really matters. (Like the ultrasound scanner at work where we now can't get hold of a replacement specific model MSI GF6600GT required for operation.)
 
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