MSI GeForce GTX 770 Lightning review - Article

MSI  GeForce GTX 770 Lightning - As fast as thunder and ...

In this review a peek at the MSI GeForce GTX 770 Lightning edition. Armed with military class components, an awesome TwinFrozr cooler that is very silent and keeps this GPU chilled down at a cool 60 Degrees C temperature. Next to that is has voltage monitoring points, a reactor core, a secondary BIOS as backup and liquid cooling and well, just so much more. Have a peek at what might be one of the finest GeForce GTX 770 cards available on the market. The end result is an impressive looking beast, the customized GTX 770 has an excellent TwinFrozr IV cooler, a product that you will not hear whilst retaining really good temperatures, yeah it works pretty darn well for both performance and silence as well..

But first things first, we take a closer look at NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 770. The GeForce GTX 770 is a top of the line segmented graphics card. It uses a familiar GPU though, yes the very same GPU as the GTX 680 actually. That makes it a chunk faster, alongside a clock frequency and memory increase it will be priced aggressively, that in a nutshell, my friends, is the new GeForce GTX 770. We test the product with the hottest games like Metro: Last Light, Battlefield 3, Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter, Hitman Absolution and many more. 

There has been a lot of chatter in the graphics arena as to what both AMD and NVIDIA are doing for the 2013 lineup of products. With the global economy at an all-time low both manufacturers have been slowing down their development cycles in order to save on R&D. But to not release new products will stall sales, as hey .. why should anybody upgrade? In the past two weeks we have seen two new products from NVIDIA, both are sort of refreshes, one being an SKU based on GeForce GTX Titan, in another jacket called the 780. The other is today's tested product, the Kepler based GeForce GTX 770. Kepler my, fellow gurus, is the codename for the architecture behind the GeForce series 600 and 700 graphics cards.

The GeForce GTX 770 is a fact and selling in the stores starting today in both 2GB and 4GB versions. You might think that it's a GTX 680 all over again, not true. The GeForce GTX 770 (reference) has a new base clock frequency, set higher at default for you, at 1046 MHz with a dynamic boost frequency that clocks up-to 1085 MHz. A nice gain however is the usage of faster DRR5 graphics memory, the GeForce GTX 770 runs at a reference stock clock frequency of 7Gbps (effective datarate). Obviously with the new cooling theme we have got to look at overclocking it a little as well, but have a quick peek at the product after which we'll dive into the GPU architecture, photo shoot and benchmarks.

But meet the GeForce GTX 770 Lightning edition edition from MSI, this is the 2GB version comes factory overclocked for you at 1150 MHz (Ref 1046) with a Boost clock of 1202 MHz (Ref 1085). The GTX 770 series memory clock has been kept at an effective data-rate of 7010 MHz. Similar to the R7970 and 680 Lightning, the new GTX 770 Lightning will also use MSI's GPU Reactor, an add-on PCB that plugs into the back of the PCB and provides cleaner and higher power levels and reduces ripple for the GPU. The GTX 770 Lightning is armed with MSI Military Class IV components and features like voltage check points and 8+8-pin PCI-Express power connectors; the card is bound to impress.

Oh yeah, let me show you what we'll talk about in this review and then head on over to the next page please.