MSI GTX 780 Lightning 3GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

MSI’s GTX 780 Lightning is a premium priced graphics card. In the UK it costs £455.74 and £455.99 from two of our preferred retailers. In the USA it costs $549.99 and in Canada it costs $599.99 CAD. Compared to typical GTX 780 pricing the MSI GTX 780 Lightning is a hefty ~20% more expensive.

Overview 

MSI’s GTX 780 Lightning is clearly an impressive piece of engineering, though it is not as perfect as the “built to be perfect” slogan implies. I’ve seen a lot of reviews of this graphics card so far and the majority of them have been vastly positive, but I’ve also read equally as many user reviews – less of which have been positive and so I can sympathise with both sides. My first issue is a result of MSI’s bad timing in sending us this to review. They’ve sent it to us so late that Gigabyte’s GTX 780 GHz Edition looks like a more attractive option to most users who just want an heavily overclocked GTX 780 for less money. It comes with a larger factory overclock (so performs better out of the box) and is a much lighter and thinner graphics card making it ideal for more systems (though it doesn’t overclock as well). That leads me onto the second issue which is that this card is just ridiculously big and heavy. Too heavy. In conventional cases you WILL need a graphics card support bracket or a case where the graphics card stands upright (the BitFenix Prodigy for example). If you don’t have that this card will seriously bend and in the long term could damage your motherboard. For the hefty price this costs I really wanted to see an included support bracket or mechanism. By too big I refer to the fact it essentially occupies four PCI lanes by overhanging on both sides of the card, if you want to run a multiple card configuration then this really isn’t a sensible option, unless you have decent motherboard PCI spacing. Another point I want to pick up on is the memory overclocking. This card was built for overclocking yet MSI made a serious mistake in using Elpida memory chips. The sole purpose of this graphics card is to overclock but MSI put VRAM chips on the card that everyone knows are inferior overclockers compared to the SK Hynix and Samsung equivalents – where’s the logic in that?

So as you can see the GTX 780 Lightning isn’t perfect, but I’ve been really harsh and there are a lot of good things to point out. The first thing is noise. This card is ridiculously quiet from our testing. MSI have always excelled at doing this and their graphics cards constantly show up as the quietest in our tests. They give you a super quiet card that runs cool enough and if you need extra cooling then you can “add more noise” yourself. While this card is really quiet it is also really cool which adds to the “impressiveness” of the cooler. In most cases vendors will sacrifice some noise to make the cooling solution appear more effective, in this case MSI have done the opposite. The cooler comes across as less impressive than it actually is because MSI’s fan profile is so gentle. The end result is that there is an absolute tonne of extra cooling potential waiting to be unlocked if you want to ramp the fan speeds up.

With regards to the overclocking this graphics card is solid. It easily posted the highest overclocks and as a result it’s hardly surprising MSI are targeting overclockers with the speed binned GPUs they put in these cards. The second BIOS also offers tweakers a higher power limit and more headroom should you want to overclock any further. To give you specifics the default BIOS has a 109% power limit and allows for up to 37mv more. The LN2 mode BIOS ups that power limit to 300% but keeps the voltage limit of 37mv. The problem is the card is capable of delivering 400mv (0.4v) extra to the GPU core but MSI aren’t allowed to distribute the version of MSI Afterburner that allows you to access that extra voltage. You have to apply for approval from MSI to access it because from what we’ve heard, Nvidia are a bit protective about it and don’t really want it falling into the hands of the average consumer. We didn’t have time and simply weren’t able to get a hold of it so ultimately our overclocking was limited by a lack of additional voltage. There is also still an element of the silicon lottery to consider and not all GPUs will overclock to the same point. However, MSI have put in the leg work to ensure that you can get the most out of the GTX 780 GPU itself, though due to Nvidia restrictions there is still only so much you can do out of the box without that special version of MSI Afterburner. The conclusion here is pretty simple – the MSI GTX 780 Lightning offers the overclocker the potential to smash world records and pump serious amounts of voltage but the average consumer may never be able to access this. Despite that, the out of the box overclocking is still best in class but to go that one step further isn’t easy, and Nvidia is mainly to blame.

Pros

• LN2 mode reduces overclocking power limits set by Nvidia
• Overclocks really well
• Runs very quiet
• Impressive cooling performance
• Part of the Nvidia 3 free games program (Batman Arkham Origins, Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag and Splinter Cell Blacklist)
• Impressive power components
• Backplate

Cons

• Too big and heavy – needs a support bracket
• Expensive
• Memory overclocking is below average
• Should come with a larger out of the box overclock
• Only a 3 year warranty for such an expensive card!?
• No unlocked voltage out of the box with either BIOS

“There are overclocked graphics cards and then there are overclockers’ graphics cards. This graphics card from MSI is certainly the latter. If you want a GTX 780 graphics card that you can overclock to obscene levels then this offers you exactly that. The MSI GTX 780 Lightning has everything an overclocker needs and if you can get access to the unlocked voltage through MSI’s special copy of Afterburner then the possibilities really are endless. Though even without that you’ve still got a tonne of potential. That potential is aided by a seriously impressive power delivery system and a whopping great big cooler. However, the GTX 780’s Lightning’s biggest success is also its biggest downfall. The relentless push for overclocking potential means the size and weight of its cooler is impractical for most systems. The card also has weak memory overclocking and isn’t the highest clocked GTX 780 on the market, though it can easily claim that title through overclocking. If you just want an overclocked graphics card then there are better options (the MSI GTX 780 TwinFrozr Gaming is a good one), but if actually want to overclock then the GTX 780 Lightning is right on the money.”

Thank you to MSI for providing this review sample.