MSI GeForce GTX 580 Lightning review - Introduction

It's not often that we are as impressed with a graphics card as the product we test today, so a little warning in advance might be appropriate here.

So dark clouds however the Guru3D laboratories in the Netherlands, a flash, a thunderbolt and BAM Lighting strikes ... the smoking hot MSI GTX 580 Lighting edition has landed in our facility.

MSI peeked at the NVIDIA reference GeForce GTX 580, then took the GeForce GTX 580 GPU, and threw the rest away. They designed a new PCB loaded with features and overclock potential, slapped some really cool memory on the card and topped off that GPU with the all new Twin Frozr III cooler.

The new cooler allows high clocks with low volume levels AND keeps the card pretty darn cool. That's definitely a win. Then MSI added stuff, little micros-witches with features for the pro-overclockers, a second BIOS, phase LEDs, voltage monitoring points and a factory overclock.

And then once it sits in your PC, the only thing you can think about is overclocking with the Afterburner OC application ... and gosh golly then you'll learn quick enough that the card clocks as well as a card that is liquid cooled.

All in all impressive stuff, have a quick peek at the product and then lets dive into the review.