MSI GTX 980Ti Lightning: The Silent Assassin

MSI 980Ti Lightning - Introduction The Silent Assassin The MSI Lightning series has always been an elite model meant for well-heeled consumers who expect the best and can afford to feed their overclocking habit. Interestingly enough, last year when the 980 was first released MSI did not quickly release a Lightning version, instead they focused more on their Gaming and waited for the 980Ti to be released before giving a new NVIDIA card the royal "Lightning" treatment. Considering the Lightning has always been a rather niche model, there is an argument to be had for first satisfying the average enthusiast needs before satisfying the needs of the typical Lightning enthusiast. The downside of course is that, on average PC gaming enthusiasts are not a patient group of consumers! As such these well-to-do consumers looked elsewhere to satisfy their needs (such as the PNY GTX 980 PRO https://realhardwarereviews.com/pny-xlr8-gtx-980-pro) . Luckily the wait is now over and MSI also has a halo / 'flagship' model to satisfy the consumer who has everything…but wants even more! In order to fully satisfy the cravings of this highly vocal, if somewhat small, group of consumers MSI has pulled out all the stops. First and foremost is this card does not come with a Twin Frozr V based custom cooling solution. Instead it comes with an entirely new Tri-Frozr design that has to be seen to be believed. This custom heatsink is so large that it not only requires three PCIe slots instead of two…it also requires three fans to cool it instead of just two. This upgrade allows this new 980Ti Lightning to boast a heatsink capable of dissipating 700watts worth of heat. To put that jaw dropping large number into perspective, the GTX 980Ti Gaming 6G Twin Frozr V version is capable of dissipating about 500 watts and was certainly not the weak link in that cards armor…and yet this monster is 40 percent more capable. This alone will make hitting massive core clock numbers down right easy…and allow the core to stay at the boost level longer. MSI has not stopped here however, and goes one step further in helping overclocking enthusiasts reach their dream of record breaking overclocking. We will go over the details later, but for now suffice to say that this card comes with a power delivery subsystem that would fit right in on high end MSI X99S XPower AC motherboard. Then to make sure that consumers can feed as much power as they want to that power delivery system MSI has opted for two 8-pin PCIe connectors and a 6-pin PCIE connector. That combination is capable of providing (in conjunction with the PCIe slot itself) 450 watts of power….for a card that on has a TDP of 250watts! Of course while this card sits up and begs to be manually overclocked, MSI understands that not everyone willing to fork out $799 for one video card will want to bother with manual overclocking. This is why this card comes with a factory overclock that sets the boost clock setting all the way to 1,304MHz and the RAM to 7,096(effective). That alone is a rather impressive overclock all on its own. Of course in order to guarantee that these cards can not only live happily at this factory setting but have plenty of gas left in the tank for overclocking enthusiasts. MSI has not only highly binned the GPU but the RAM as well with only the best of the best parts being allowed to make it on to a Lightning. Taken as a whole this card is obviously meant to make a statement to both consumers and the competition alike; and what MSI is saying is 'you had better bring your A game if you even want to come close to matching what we can offer consumers'. So without further ado let's put this monster under the microscope and see what it really can do. Everyone needs Metal Gear Solid V:Phantom Pain MSI 980Ti Lightning - Specs and Features MSI 980Ti Lightning - GeForce GTX 980Ti explained For anyone who is just starting out on their quest for their next high end video card, the GM200-310 can be considered a slightly cut down version of Maxwell core that powers the GeForce GTX Titan X series. To envision this, imagine Titan X's 'GM200-400' core, aka the 'fully enabled' version of the Maxwell GM200 core, with its 6 Graphic Process Clusters (GPC). Each of these GPCs is made up of four streaming multiprocessor (SMM) 'blocks', one 64-bit memory controller and one Rasterizer engine. Each SMM block consists of 32 CUDA cores, 8 Raster Operation Pipelines (ROPs), and 8 Texture Units - plus other low level goodies. Now imagine that fully enabled core and simply disable two of the SMM's, but leaving almost everything else intact, including the ROPs, L2 cache, and memory bus bandwidth. In fact, with the exception of the two disable SMM's units, the only thing else cut from the 'full' GM200-400 core is the 64bit- memory controller in each GPC has had its abilities slightly degraded from 2GB per controller to a 'mere' 1GB. That is what the 980Ti (aka GM200-310) is, a 2816 CUDA core, 176 Texture Unit, 96 ROPs, 3072K L2 cache beast with a 384-bit wide bus that can handle 6GB of GDDR5 memory. Equally important, the clock speed and boost speed of 1000MHz / 1075MHz has been left the same as the Titan X series. In other words consumers trade 256 Cuda cores, 16 Texture units, and 6GB of Memory for a 131% reduction is asking price. IE you literally can get two GTX 980Ti's and have money left over for a better motherboard compared to purchasing just one Titan X. That is a good deal no matter how you look at it. While some people will cry foul over NVIDIA waiting so long to release this version of the Maxwell architecture (we have heard people say that the Titan X should have been the 980Ti and the 980Ti should have been the GTX 980) the fact of the matter is the fabrication process is only now mature enough to give high yields of 'full' GM200 processors. Yes this means early adopters of GTX 980 video cards have now been pushed down the food chain, but the 980Ti is not meant to compete against the stock GTX 980. Instead the 980TI is meant to be the consumer orientated version of the Titan X. This is why reference 980Ti's were released with a MSRP of $649 compared to the GTX 980's $549, and Titan X's $1499 price points. As an aside, most consumers looking at the 980Ti will probably be 780Ti owners looking to upgrade, so we would be remiss if we didn’t mention that this MSRP of $649 is $50 less than what the 780Ti's MSRP was when it was released. On the surface of things a stock 980Ti is indeed a marvelous piece of engineering, but it didn’t take consumers long to realize that while the clock rates may indeed be the same as the Titan X, they are noticeably slower than a 'reference' 980's 1126/1216Mhz settings. Of course with so many extra Cuda Cores, Texture Units, and even ROPs, even heavily overclocked 980's stood zero chance catching up with the GM200-310. It did however leave consumers wanting even more …and this is where the MSI Lightning 980Ti enters the equation. MSI 980Ti Lightning - A Closer Look For the Lightning 980Ti MSI has gone all out and created a box that is nearly impossible to miss. This box is not only extremely bright and colorful but bloody massive to boot. This combination of bright aesthetics with over-sized dimension makes this shipping container rather distinctive and easily makes it stand out from the competition when on retail shelves. Of course, this massive size does make it more costly to ship, but as with everything in life this is the trade off consumers have to be willing to make. More to the point, if a few dollars extra in shipping fees matters that much to you this card is not right for you. By removing the shipping sleeve / external shipping container we can see that the internal box consists of two parts, the top two thirds is where the Lightning itself resides, cocooned in enough foam to make it all but impervious to even the angriest postmen's tantrum. To access the card itself the top third hinges up and out of the way to show the card in an electro static bag. The bottom third is actually a drawer where the accessories reside inside another smaller box. The list of accessories is also rather extreme and downright stellar. In grand total you will get a manual, driver dvd, extra-long SLI ribbon bridge connector, 6pin to 8pin adapter, three sets of voltmeter adapters, certificate of stability, and best of all an extra metal bracket for LN2 users. That is what we call an accessory list. Even on just a quick glance you can tell that this is not your typical 980TI, nor is it your typical MSI 980Ti either. Instead this card is bigger, bolder and simply screams 'overclocking and PC gaming enthusiast' - with a King Kong chest pound thrown in for good measure. That in and of itself is telling as MSI are not ones to take the typical route and have produced extremely good, factory overclocked 980TI's in the past, and yet this card simply dwarfs them in both the aesthetics and sheer size department. Now with that being said the yellow and black color scheme will either 'work' for you, or your will find it a touch off putting. The same can be said of the Gaming series' red & black looks. Interestingly enough while we found the Gaming 980Ti a touch too aggressive, the styling of this card simply works for us. Maybe it's because we personally prefer yellow to red, maybe it is because the yellow spells 'OC' and gave us a chuckle when we first realized that….or maybe it's just because this card reminds us of the old Chevy Camaro muscle cars from our youth. In either case we have absolutely nothing bad to say about the looks of this card. You may feel differently. In either case, consumers do not purchase a Lightning for its looks, and rather for its performance. In order to satisfy consumers need for speed, MSI has created an entirely new custom heatsink and fan combination that is as impressive as it is large (to be precise this card weighs a whopping 1365grams and is 330mm long x 140mm wide x 53mm high). First and foremost is this card is a 3 slot design. This certainly allows the heatsink to be bigger, but it means this card will simply not fit on all motherboards. However, most gaming orientated motherboards come with three spaces between their primary and secondary PCIe x16 slots so this should not be overly concerning. Just be aware of it before purchasing this model. To be fair this card is more of a 2.5 - 2.75 slot design than a three slot design. This has been done so that if you do use two of them the top most will not be starved for air, and instead will be able to suck in as much air as needed between the gap. Equally noteworthy is the fact that this card is not only taller and longer than most it is also wider. Just like the MSI Gaming series, this card's heatsink 'overhangs' the PCB and as such if you try sticking this monster in a smaller case you are going to have to break out the sawzall. Of course trying to stick this card inside a smaller case would be surreal to say the least. More importantly as long as your case has a side panel fan there should be plenty of room to put the side panel back on your case with first cutting holes in the side panel. On the positive side, MSI has not wasted a millimeter of these increased dimensions and instead uses it all for a heatsink that is insanely capable. MSI rates this heatsink for a whopping 700 watts of heat dissipation and honestly we believe them. Even when further overclocked this TriFrozr design simply laughed at the heat output from the core and was damn near silent while under load. Basically at its factory settings the core ran only in the high 60s and the card was whisper quiet. Better still is when idle the fans stop running and the Lightning runs in passive mode - just like the Gaming series. Better still is this card can do all this not because it is a reference speed Maxwell core that runs cool, instead it is one of the highest factory overclocked cards you can buy today. Specifically a reference 980TI runs at a maximum 'boost' speed of 1,075Mhz on the core and 7010 (effective) on the memory. MSI's Gaming series boosted that to 1279 and 7096 memory, and then the Lightning comes along and twists the dial all the way to eleven with a boost clock setting of 1304Mhz (21.3 percent over reference!) on the core, and the RAM set to 7,096Mhz. That is not a cool running design and yet the TriFrozr easily handles this heat load. Damn that is impressive. In order to do all this the heatsink makes use of more aluminum than a beer keg, and has three 8mm heatpipes and two 6mm heatpipes. To ensure that the heat which is transferred from the core to the heatsink is then efficiently whisked away MSI has gone with three 90mm fans - thus the 'Tri' in TriFrozr. While each of these fans are individually smaller than the Gaming series fans the fact there is three of them makes up for in quality that may be lost in quality. In testing all three fans were whisper quiet while not individually controlled (they are configured in a two zone (2 + 1) setup with each zone being controlled separately from the other) as on the Gaming series proved to be even more effective. To ensure that this massive heatsink does not cause any bending to occur MSI has given the Lightning 980Ti a full length backplate replete with a fighter jet being hit with lightning bolts. This is a nice touch that has the added benefit of giving this card a rather striking look. However, beyond physically reinforcing the card and helping the aesthetics this backplate also serves a crucial role in protecting some of the power delivery components from damage. We dislike seeing so many components residing on the back of the PCB but given the large and robust nature of this cards power delivery system we understand why the engineers had to do it - as they ran out of room on the topside! By removing more screws than we care to count and gently removing that massive heatsink we can see that MSI has once again gone above & beyond by including a secondary heatsink for the RAM and other critical components. However unlike other secondary heatsinks that MSI has used on their Gaming series, this one not only weighs a heck of a lot more, it also has more cooling surface. This is because it not only has cooling fins built into it, but the entire outer perimeter has been raised. This means that waste air from the three fans will come into contact with this heatsink much longer than otherwise and transfer more heat to it. Basically air will be pushed down on to it, but before escaping out the sides has to roll up and then over the edge. This points towards big things on the RAM overclocking side of the equation. This goes double when the fact that MSI only uses the absolute highest binned GDDR5 RAM ICs to make it on to their Lightning. When we removed that secondary heatsink and took a good look at the power delivery system we must admit to being impressed. This Lightning uses a 12 + 3 design that relies upon two separate all digital VRM controllers. One is dedicated to the core and the other is for the memory and PLL. Equally important is all the power components consist of MSI' Miltary Grade 4 parts. This means 60 amp DRMOS mosfets, Hi-C and Dark Caps, and Super Ferrite Chokes. Interestingly enough the core VRM design appears to be a 8 real phase design with 4 additional 'virtual' phases added on. This will help spread the load out and not only keep individual component temperatures lower but also allow for increase stability in voltages being sent to the core. As with the RAM, MSI has worked closely with NVIDIA to ensure that only 'golden' chips make the grade. This too points towards big things on the core overclocking side of the equation. To ensure that the RAM and Core VRM controllers get enough power to feed this hungry beast MSI has gone with two 8-pin PCIe ports and a third 6-pin port. With the PCIe slots 75 watts taken into consideration this means this card can - theoretically - draw up to 450 watts of power. That pretty much is the definition of overkill for a 250 watt TDP card! However, it certainly will not be wasted for elite enthusiasts looking to break world records. For consumers interested in such things MSI also included voltage read points that allow you to easily confirm in real-time what the actual voltages being sent to the various components are. Not everyone will want to double check the software readings, but those that do will like the fact that don't have to solder in read points first. Also of note is that this card comes with a LN2 switch which allows for more sub-zero overclocking abilities. Though most consumers will find this switch to not be needed as MSI has been forced by NVIIDIA to abide NVIDIA maximum voltage specifications. This is a shame as this heatsink and this power delivery system could easily handle even more voltage than NVIDIA will allow. Of course if you are such a like minded individual who is either handy with a soldering iron or a firmware modding software program you can 'theoretically' override these settings and push even more power. This will void your warranty and MSI will not be pleased with you…but it is your card and if you want to wring every drop of performance out of it…etc etc etc. We personally don't recommend it as this cards performance when fully overclocked was jaw droppingly large. You may feel differently, but in either case this issue is NVIDIA's fault and not MSI's. About the only thing on the MSI Lightning 980Ti that can be accused of being 'reference' is the output selection. On the bottom row you get to three full size DisplayPorts, and a single full size HDMI 2.0 port; while the top row is split nearly evenly between exhaust slits and a single DVI port. Overall it is a very nice selection that should satisfy most consumers' needs nicely. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Testing Methodology To fully test the abilities of a given video card, we have used a blend of in-game benchmarks and custom recorded real world game benchmarking. For custom game play we have used FRAPS to record the minimum and average frame rates and to do so for a set period of time. All tests were run a minimum of four times and the scores are the average of all four runs. All games were patched to their latest version. The OS was a fresh clean install of Windows 7 with all latest hotfixes, patches and updates applied. All games were tested at the two of the most popular resolutions of 1080P (1920x1080) and then again at 1440P (2560x1440). This means each game tested was run a minimum of 8 times: 4 @ 1080P and 4 @1440P. Before testing Unigine’s Valley benchmark was run for 15 minutes to ‘warm up’ the video card. This was done to ensure that long term performance and not short term performance is being illustrated. The games used for testing were: Sleeping Dogs Metro: Last Light BioShock Infinite Crysis 3 Batman: Arkham Origins Tomb Raider Battliefield 4 Assassins Creed: Black Flag Call of Duty: Ghosts Witcher 3 For stress testing we used Unigine’s Valley benchmark. For overclocking we used either the manufactures included software overclocking program or if necessary EVGA’s Precision X program. Drivers: GeForce 353.30 AMD Catalyst: 15.7 Main Test System Processor: Intel i7 5930K Memory: 32GB (4x8GB) Crucial Ballistic Elite Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X99 Cooling: Noctua U12S SSD: 1x Intel 750 1.2TB NVMe SSD Power Supply: Corsair AX860i Monitor: Dell U2714H OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 Special thanks to Crucial for providing the memory for this testbed - we highly recommend this memory kit Synthetic Game Benchmarks (SGB) In the Synthetic Gaming Benchmarks section we will show a number of benchmark comparisons of the test card and other comparable GPUs, using various benchmarks which come included with five popular modern PC games. This will illustrate how much performance this card has to offer. To ensure that long term performance is and not short term performance is illustrated 15 minutes of Unigine’s Valley benchmark was run to ‘warm up’ the video card. Only then were any tests run on the now warm video card. Real World In-Game Benchmarks (RWB) In the Real Gaming Benchmarks section we will show a number of timed real world game play results using FRAPS and five popular modern PC games. This will illustrate how much performance the card being tested has to offer, and do so in a way which cannot be unduly skewed by driver ‘optimizations’ which have been included for the sole purpose of improving benchmark results. While not as common as it once was such optimizing is still not unheard of by either AMD or NVIDIA. Once again Unigine’s Valley benchmark was run for 15 minutes to ‘warm up’ the video card prior to testing. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Sleeping Dogs (SGB) Sleeping Dogs is an open world action-adventure video game developed by United Front Games in conjunction with Square Enix London Studios and published by Square Enix, released on August 2012. Sleeping Dogs has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are the Extreme display settings and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. World density is set to extreme, Vsync disabled, high-res textures are enabled, and shadow resolution, shadow filtering, screen space ambient occlusion, and quality motion blur are all set to high. As you can see the overall average frame per second score certainly did go up but what catches our attention the most was the minimum frame rate performance boost. At 1080P this card can literally max out the typical 60Hz monitor on just its absolute worst case, minimum frame rate numbers. That certainly does put things in perspective and is a good way to make a great first impression. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Metro: Last Light (SGB) Metro: Last Light is a DX11 first-person shooter video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features action-oriented gameplay. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play. Scene D6 was used and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Very High for quality and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. DirectX 11 is used, texture filtering is set to AF 16X, motion blur is normal, SSA turned on and tessellation is set to high. With Metro LL you can expect (depending on resolution) a mid-5% boost in average frame rates and an additional 1 to 2 frames on the all-important minimum frame rate settings. This latter is actually more important as for the first time ever we have a single core video card that can offer nearly playable settings in Metro LL with all the eye candy turned on (i.e. it nearly hits 30fps on the min. frames)! That really was the sole domain of dual card solutions up until now. Of course this card can only offer this at 1080P resolutions and you will still need to turn a setting or two down a notch at 1440P but this achievement is still impressive. MSI 980Ti Lightning - BioShock Infinite (SGB) BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games, and published by 2K Games released in March 2013. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are UltraDX11 (option 3) for quality and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. By modern standards BioShock Infinite is a rather easy game to drive to insane numbers…and this card can certainly push the numbers clear into the stratosphere. Equally important is, much like Sleeping Dogs, this card is capable of almost maxing out a 60Hz monitor under worst case conditions. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Tomb Raider (SGB) Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game published by Square Enix and released in March 2013. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Ultimate default settings for quality (sans 'hair' shading), VSync disabled and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. Tomb Raider was a game that actually came the closest to the overall average improvement this card offers. Basically you can expect to get about 5% better performance than the normal factory overclocked 980Tis…and do so with a card that is darn near silent. To put that another way, this silent assassin can offer consumers 2 -3 frames per second on the all-important minimum frame rate end of the scale…and do so at noise levels that most water cooling units would have a hard time matching. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Batman Arkham Origins (SGB) Batman: AO is an action-adventure video game published by Warner Bros and released in October 2013. The game has a benchmark component to it that mimics game play and an average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. Anti-Aliasing is set to TXAA (high). Motion blur, Distortion, Lens Flare, Light Shafts, and Reflections set to On. Geometry, Dynamic Shadows, Depth of Field, and Ambient Occlusion all set to DX11 Enhanced. Even though this is a game that can be hard on modern video cards, the MSI Lightning 980Ti simply laughs at its demands and post numbers at even 1440P that are so marvelously high that some monitors would not be able to keep up with it. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Battlefield 4 (RWB) Battlefield 4 is first person shooter video game, published by EA Digital Illusions CE and released in October 2013. Unlike most, this games does not include an in-game benchmark. This makes it perfect for more real world gaming tests. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded the first 90 seconds of the single player Tashgar level. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Ultra pre-set for quality, with VSync disabled and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. Battlefield 4 is certainly not a game that anyone could claim to be NVIDIA friendly…and yet if you want to experience the best game play possible that is exactly what you need to do - use this NVIDIA card. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Assassins Creed: Black Flag (RWB) Assassins Creed: BF is an historical action-adventure video game, published by published by Ubisoft and released in October 2013. Like Battlefield 4 this games does not include an in-game benchmark. This makes it perfect for more real world gaming testing. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded a custom run through Havana’s marketplace. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. Environment quality was set to very high, Anti-Aliasing was set to TXAA 4X, Ambient Occlusion set to HBAO+ (high), Shadow Quality set to ‘soft shadow’, Motion Blur and Volumetric Blur both set to On. Texture Quality, Reflection Quality, and God Rays all set to High. Assassins Creed BF posted some of the largest gains of any title in our test suite. Specifically at 1440P this card was over 7% better than its nearest rival and even then offered 3 -5 extra FPS on the critical minimum frame rates. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Call of Duty: Ghosts (RWB) Call of Duty: Ghosts is a first person shooter video game, published by Activision and released in October 2013. Since it does not include an in-game benchmark, it perfect for more real world gaming testing. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded 90 seconds of the single player ‘Ghost Stories' level, starting as soon as we resume control of Logan back on Earth. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. Image Quality, Textures Resolution, Normal Map Resolution, and Specular Map Resolution set to Extra. Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and Antistrophic Filtering set to High, Terrain Detail set to ON, and Anti-Aliasing was set to TXAA 4X. With Shadows, Distortion, Motion Blue and Depth of Field set to Yes. Once again this MSI Lightning 980Ti posts numbers that were solely in the realm of SLI and CrossFire not that long ago. That is impressive - even if it you are paying a hefty premium to get that level of performance. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Crysis 3 (RWB) Crysis 3 is a first person shooter video game, published by Electronic Arts and released in February 2013. While older than some of the others it is one of the most visually stunning games released to date and puts a lot of demands on the GPU. This makes it perfect for more real world gaming testing. To obtain repeatable results we have used FRAPs and recorded 90 seconds of the single player ‘Post Human' level, starting as soon as soon as prophet is handed a Hammer II pistol by Psycho. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are highest settings for quality, VSync disabled and a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. Texture Quality, Game Effects, Objects, Particles, Post Processing, Shadows, Shading, Water, and System Specs all set to Very High. Motion Blur was set to High and Lens Flare was set to On. Anti-Aliasing was set to MSAA 8X and Antistrophic Filtering was set to 16x. Honestly the more we tested this card the more we love what it has to offer. Once again it does provide tangibly better results, and does so without ever becoming noisy…or even noticeable for that matter. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Witcher 3 (RWB) Witcher 3 is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED and released on May 2015. Our test uses a real world timed benchmark that consists of three minutes of game play during the 'Beast of the White Orchard' quest. This section of the game incorporates everything from grass, to water, to hair, to numerous NPCs. An average of four runs was taken. The settings used in the testing below are Ultra display settings, but with HairWorks off and Vsync disabled, at a resolution of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080. And that seals the deal, this card is fast and will add frames per second to both the average and the critical minimum frame rate. Is a approximate 5% increase in performance over the already very good Gaming 6G worth the extra $110 dollars? We think so, but you may feel differently. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Temperature, Noise, and Power Analysis Video Card Temperature Results For all temperature testing the cards were used in an open test bed environment. Ambient temperature was kept at a constant 20°C (+/- 0.5°C) and if the ambient room temperatures rose above 21°C or dropped below 19°C at any time, all benchmarking was stopped until proper temperatures could normalized. For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak temperature. For Load tests, we ran Unigine’s Valley benchmark for 20 minutes. Yes these numbers are correct. This magnificent beast keeps that highly overclocked Maxwell core humming along at downright cool temperatures. Though when you think about it, a heatsink and fan designed for 700 watts of heat shouldn't have any problems with a 250w TDP card…but it still is bloody impressive to say the least. Sound Level Test Results While everyone "hears" noise differently there is one easy way to remove all subjectivity and easily compare different fans: use a sound level meter. This way you can easily compare the various fans noise envelopes without us coloring the results and see what fans fit within your personal comfort level. Of course, we will endeavor to try and explain the various results - which are taken at a 15 inch distance from the GPU’s fan(s) - to help you gain an even better understanding of how loud a cooler's stock fan is, but even if you discount our personal opinions, the fact remains numbers don't lie. For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak dB. For Load tests, we ran Unigine’s Valley benchmark for 20 minutes and recorded the peak dB. Even though this card is heavily its idle numbers are basically below ambient and its load numbers are not much higher than a whisper. This TriFrozr cooler really does work and work well . System Power Consumption To obtain accurate results we have connected the system to a Power Angle power meter that has in turn been attached to a 1500watt UPS. This ensures only 120volt power is supplied to the PSU and removes an variances that could potential crop up because of brownouts and power spikes. In order to stress the video card we have once again used Unigine’s Valley benchmark and ran it for 20 minutes to determine peak system power consumption. For idle results we have let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak idle power consumption. Considering this card is heavily overclocked its slightly higher power consumption should come as no surprise. To be honest, what was surprising was how close it was to the Gaming 6G 980Ti as we would have thought it would use even more power! MSI 980Ti Lightning - Overclocking Quite honestly this video card is the most pleasant and yet frustrating video card to overclock. On the one hand that amazingly beefy power delivery system combined with three PCIe power connectors allows for amazingly stable voltages. Simply put you set it and you forget it as it is not going to bounce around like a tennis ball. When you then take those over-engineered components and give it a cooling system that rivals the best water based cooling solution in both the noise and temperature department this too makes things so much easier it is not even funny. Then, and this really is the icing on the cake, when you take into account that MSI has worked closely with NVIDIA to provide Lightning owners with the absolute crème de la crème of 980Ti Maxwell cores…well it really is smile worthy. However, this is where the frustration comes into play. Because NVIDIA basically threatened MSI with never getting another GPU from them during the earlier Lightning days, this card - just like the 780Ti has been handicapped in the voltage department. Basically you will not be able to push any higher voltage on this card than you would on a reference model. That is so damn frustrating and would be like owning a Mclaren F1 but never being allowed to take it out 3rd…as the higher gear slots on the shifter have been welded shut. This is why we only reached a boost rate of 1,505Mhz. Getting this was extremely easy, crank the voltage all the way and start playing…which did not take all that long to dial in. Of course, this is still a 40% overclock over reference levels, but we know this highly binned core could have done even better. Now do not get us wrong this is not MSI's fault, they did try to get this artificial limitation removed for the Lightning series…and NVIDIA refused to negotiate in good faith. When being faced with what is tantamount to blackmail we cannot fault MSI for taking this hit and protecting their long term interest. Instead the blame almost solely rests on the shoulders of NVIDIA and their shortsightedness…and the rest being AMDs fault for not being able to compete in the ultra-high-end (the Fury series is good…but no Lightning). We all know that if NIVIDIA had true competition in this area they probably would be a lot less shortsighted about working with manufactures like MSI on their 'special' models. On the positive side, if you are handy with a firmware hack…or even just a soldering iron you can get around this limitation and really crank things wide open. We personally did not feel the need for this as MSI will null and void your warranty if you do either. Also on the positive side MSI gives you RAM voltage options that usually are only in the realm of hardware mods! This allows for downright insane overclocking on the RAM side of the equation…and really will come down to be how far you are willing to push things. For us we are a bit on the conservative side and while the RAM certainly was capable of even higher (we had it in the 8700 range before quickly scaling back to long term survivable levels)…we felt getting an effective speed of 8,344Mhz was 'good enough'. After all this is a full 1,344MHz above reference speeds (an 19% overclock!) and this pushes the memory bandwidth from 336.5GB/s all the way to 400.5GB/s! MSI 980Ti Lightning - Performance Summary and TL;DR In an effort to make sorting through all the results as easy as possible we have combined the results all of all the game results into an easy to digest summary format. By comparing it to similar products in all the games you will be able to easily find the game(s) you are interested in, see the improvement and decide if it is the worth the investment. Put simply this card is more like a Lamborghini Huracán rather than a Tesla Model S. As such if you are trying to justify the additional price on its increased performance…you will have to start thinking about this card vs two cheaper SLI'ed cards, instead of this card vs a normal factory overclocked 980ti. Of course a good argument could be made on those grounds, and many consumers prefer to buy the fastest single card they can find; but honestly this card is all about being the fastest single card in existence. At this, MSI knocked it out the park, but phrases like 'value' are going to be frog marched out the nearest airlock long before you reach this level of performance. . In other words if you want the best, be prepared to pay for best. Score Card and Summary Packaging & Accessories: 9 out of 10 The shipping container and the accessories are nothing short of amazing. MSI not only covered all of the bases nicely they even added in nice little flourishes like a custom LN2 plate. That to us makes the Lightning 980Ti the gold standard upon which all others must be judged. Functionality & Aesthetics: 18 out of 20 As with all high performance video cards you will either like the look of this card….or you will love it. Either way there is no denying that this cards TriFrozr custom cooling solution works! The only possible negative anyone will have with this card is its 3 slot form-factor, but even that is not that big a deal. You may feel otherwise. Build Quality & Warranty: 19 out of 20 If there is any area that could be improved upon it is in the warranty department. If this card came with a 5 year instead of 3 three, this would have gone a long ways to justifying its price premium. Instead it has to do it the old fashioned way: build quality. Put simply this card is over-engineered to the point where we doubt all but the most extreme of consumers will kill it. As such we can only deduct 1 point from it for its industry standard warranty. Performance: 30 out of 30 This card is the epitome of single core performance and to get better than it you are going to have to go the SLI or CrossFire route…as anything else simply wont cut it. Value: 16 out of 20 On the one hand this card is designed and built like the premium grade card it is, on the other it's rather pricey. As such even with improved performance 'value' is not this cards strong suit. Of course with flagship models value is never a major priority and we cannot really fault MSI for pricing this card the way they have. It costs a lot of money to bin parts, and to use higher grade components on a card. Taken as a whole we feel this card is a solid sweet sixteen on the value scale. You may feel different and are free to add or subtract points based on your particular needs/wants/desires. Final Score: 92 out of 100 What this card lacks in 'value' it more than makes up for in sheer performance and quality. If you want a single card solution that can be quite as a church mouse but push pixels like nobody's business, and is built like a tank this is the card for you. If on the other hand you are concerned about the price, maybe stepping down a notch to a 'normal' factory overclocked 980Ti Gaming 6G would be a more optimal choice. MSI 980Ti Lightning - Closing Statement Have you ever had a card just 'fit' your needs so well that it was hard to look past all it did so amazingly well to look for nits to pick? Most non-reviewers will probably honestly answer that question with a "No…why would anyone do that. That is like looking a gift horse in the mouth to check its teeth!". Reviewers on the other hand will instantly go 'YES!....and damn those white buffalos are hard to be fair and balanced over". Out of over literally hundreds of reviews we have done, we can personally count on one hand the number of times this has happened…. and every time it has happened it has been on parts that just resonated with us and stayed in one system or another for a long, long time. The first was an Intel X-80 Solid State Drive that is still going strong to this day in an older system. Another was a CoolIT Freezone Elite that is still being used by a fellow reviewer of ours in their testbed. The (previously) most recent was the Intel 750 1.2TB NVMe solid state drive - that will have to be pried from our cold dead hands. The all new MSI GTX 980Ti Lightning is another white buffalo that happens so rarely that they are always memorable, and always models we continuously refer back to. They are simply the gold standard upon which others in their class must be judged. After working with numerous Twin Frozr V cards we must admit to liking this custom design a lot. It works, it is silent, and it offers copious cooling potential. The TriFrozr is better. It too is just as low noise a solution; it too works amazingly well…but offers so much more cooling potential that you really will be looking long and hard to find its equal. There is so much cooling potential that even when heavily overclocked things like worrying about short term boost performance vs long term boost become almost moot. You set a speed and if you let the fans go full throttle this card will hit that speed and stay there . All by itself this Tri-FROZR design and what it brings to the table alone makes the 980Ti Lightning one of the best 980Ti cards on the market today. Price be damned. However this is only the tip of the Lightning iceberg, and just like an iceberg most of its raw power is hidden beneath the surface. If you do crack open the heatsink and look at the PCB not only will you find an extremely robust secondary heatsink to keep the RAM and other critical components cool, you will also find one of the best power delivery subsystems you will find on any NVIDIA card available today - including Titan X models. This power delivery system provides ultra clean, ultra-stable power to the Maxwell core and the RAM and does so even when everything is maxed out. Honestly phrases such as 'built like a tank', 'overbuilt so much that even infantry couldn’t break it', and even 'overkill' spring to mind. This too makes the MSI 980Ti Lightning a cut above the rest. Now with all that said this card costs more than the typical GTX 980Ti and will simply not be within reach of most consumers budgets. Honestly, besides debates over 2 slot vs 3 slot designs, that is about the only thing consumers can legitimately complain about with this card. If you want the best, you have to be willing to pay for the best and at $799 this card is still one of the very few cards that can easily be classified as 'the best'. If you are the type of person who can afford, can justify, and wants what is easily one of the elite breeds of 'best' this card had better be on your short list. For anyone not interested in selling their first born, a kidney or other vital appendage the Lightning may not be right for you - and that is why MSI offers the more reasonable Gaming 6GB 980Ti…which is no slouch either. Beyond the price the only really 'controversial' part about this card is that it MSI follows NVIDIA's strict guidelines on voltage limitations. Yes this card will not push more voltage than the Gaming 6G GTX 980Ti; however that is not the same as saying the core is not more highly binned and goes further with what it can do. This is part of the reason why these cost more than a typical 980Ti - as binning cores and only using the cream of the crop is time consuming and bloody expensive! If getting the core to a 'mere' 1,500Mhz really is not enough for you…you can always find guides on hard voltage modding. For the rest of us sane people, such an overclock is more than enough.

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