Conclusion

Conclusion

You know it is hard, really hard, to not like any of the Lighting products released in the past year or two. So for MSI to divert a little from that Lightning formula actually is a ballsy thing to do. Now honestly, I am not sure if everybody will like the three fan cooling design. It's a little busy on the eyes and the independent control to me personally serves absolutely no functional purpose. But other then that, if you combine it with the right motherboard, it might just look fantastic. And hey, the great thing is that MSI was able to keep the card within a 2 slot design, meaning that you could even go for a SLI setup. And I know that sounds extreme, but everything about the GTX 780 Lightning oozes and breathes extreme. 

The performance that you retrieve from the factory overclocked GeForce GTX 780 already is significant alright. Armed with military class components, that awesome. The TriFrozr cooler is silent and keeps this GPU chilled down at a 75 Degrees C temperature. Though that was a little higher then I expected, it really is a nice cooling temp versus noise level though. This seems to be one of the finest, if not the best GeForce GTX 780 cards available on the market. And yeah I do not say that very often. Coming from a GeForce GTX 680 you can expect a good 40% more performance and looking down from a GeForce GTX Titan, the performance difference is less then 2% and we have even seen a win or two over Titan with this Lightning. This is due to the fact that this card can boost fairly high. So overall the performance remains close to or matches the reference clocked GeForce GTX Titan. 
 

Aesthetics

Armed with the latest revision of the Trifrozr cooler the card is a roughly 5 to 10 degrees Celsius lower opposed to the reference cooler whist remaining silent. This revision is a dual-slot solution with three fans, I think it looks great. But we do understand that a three fan cooler is not everybody's cup of tea. The PCB obviously is 100% customized and armed with merely the best components available on the market ensuring a longer lifespan of this product. The looks, well the cooler in its all black design on a drak PCB with the three subtle and silent fans combined with a hint of yelled makes this a good looking package alright. Great looking and very sturdy I must state as well. There is a metal plate at the top and backside of the card so the card can not bend when seated horizontally in the PC. 

Now if you wonder why MSI uses a black and yellow design, obviously they would love it if you pair the product with an MPower or XPower motherboard.

Cooling & Noise Levels

The NVIDIA reference coolers are doing their job well, but they follow the temperature target of 80 degrees C. With the TriFrozr cooling technology the GPU will get a good 400 to 450W of cooling power at its disposal. As a result the temperature target might remain 80 degrees C, but we have never seen the card pass 75 Degrees, and remember that it is factory overclocked. There is a bit of a design flaw in the cooler though, the smaller middle fan basically is useless as it blows directly on top of heatpipes, and not the PCB itself. So that is a bit of a misser. Now if the temperature is that low there is an extra benefit, the power and temperature limiters do not have to kick in, allowing the product to boost a little higher then usual. This is one of many reasons as to why the card is so close towards the GeForce GTX Titan. Noise wise I am very happy as well. In its default configuration you can not hear airflow when the GPU is under stress installed in a PC. It really is that silent.

Power Consumption

Again not bad, the card is rated at as having a 250 Watt TDP, we measure pretty much 233 Watts. From the top of my head that's roughly the number as GeForce GTX 580 had a two years ago. Compared to that product you have nearly double the performance at the same wattage. That 250 Watt TDP also will make running multi-GPU solutions a bit more easy. With two card we think an 800 Watt PSU would be sufficient. So while it's not great to have a GPU sucking up 250 Watt it could have been a lot worse. So, perspective is the word I like you to keep in mind.

Game Performance

The card in most scenarios will be what, 2% away from a GeForce GTX Titan?, comparing towards GTX 680 it seems 30% maybe 35% faster. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. And with a single GPU there's no micro-stuttering (if that ever bothered you) and no multi-GPU driver issues to fight off. Performance wise really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at the very best image quality settings. I mean, Metro Last Light at 2560x1440 at very high quality is doing ~50FPS on average, I rest my case.

Overclocking

With the release of GTX Titan, GTX 780, GTX 770 and GTX 760 a thing or two have changed, the new boost modes now also can be configured with temperature targets relative to maximum power draw and your GPU Core frequency offsets. Saying that I realize it's sounds complicated, but you'll have your things balanced out quite fast. This GPU with the MSI TriFrozr cooler can take 1175~1200 MHz on the boost frequency fairly easily really, at that stage you added another 10% performance already. Our tweak made the GPU run at just above 1300 MHz depending on temperature, power draw and load. Please do download the SE edition of MSI AfterBurner which will give you a little extra something. But yeah, for a processor with a gobsmacked 7 Billion transistors, that is just impressive stuff really. We do wonder - what if we had a little more Voltage available for the GPU - aah, that nagging itch ;)

Concluding

There is very little to conclude other then the observation is simple, the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Lighting is king of the hill. Though there are subtle changes in the cooling design the reality remains simple, the Lightning is a beast capable of serving the guys and girls that want sheer performance and a cool looking card right out of the box, or it can serve the enthusiast end-user just as well as this product was made and designed to break barriers. The GTX 780 Lightning is an extremely sturdy build with merely the best components quality, it's darn fast in performance as it comes close / or even passes a Titan. Butter smooth fluid framerates is what you'll play your games with thanks to the very serious amount of horsepower at hand with this GTX 780. It does so while hardly making any noise and very low stress temperatures.

Now I wanted to overclock faster, but NVIDIA's Voltage and Power limiters where fighting me. The card most certainly can go much higher. NVIDIA PLEASE REMOVE THESE ANNOYING LIMITATIONS. It is the same thing over and over again and is taking killing off the extreme and enthusiast market. I want a switch where I can turn these off and have no problem acknowledging away a disclaimer.

That said, if you choose the MSI N780 Lightning edition, then you are in for something very special. Great performance, sturdy design, quality components, great cooling and all that at silent noise levels. What more can you ask for. Next to that, there remains room left for tweaking. Overall the product is just impressive and has fantastic looks. The MSRP pricing for the card we expect will hover at EUR 699 (incl. VAT), and sure I concur that the price remains the only obstacle for this product series, as with that budget it is out of reach for many. 

We reward the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Lightning edition with our top pick award. What an impressive product.

• GeForce GTX 780 Reference review
• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 WindForce 3x OC review
• EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC ACX review
• GeForce GTX 780 2-way SLI and Multi monitor review
• MSI GEForce GTX 780 Gaming edition review
• ASUS GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC review

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