Product Showcase

Product Showcase

If we rotate the card and look at the backside we can see two SLI connectors, so in theory four cards in quad-SLI GPU mode are supported. But from what we learned, 3-way SLI is the maximum mode supported by NVIDIA. Now worries though as quad SLI is difficult and often a maze of driver problems, Nvidia has never really recommended and actively supported quad-SLI.  We really recommend to go with a maximum of 2 maybe three cards anyway.

For this GeForce GTX 780 article we'll look at performance based on high-end yet more moderate processors and then on the X79 platform with an overclocked Core i7 3960X running at 4600 MHz. Here we see the MSI card (you can find it under SKU code N780 Lightning) installed on our test bench.

We need to tell you a tale or two about the GPU and the architecture of course, but lets first look at the Lightning installed and powered up. 

A LED lit cover acts as load indicator. There are actually three colors that will get displayed. This is a first for MSI to include, previously we have only seen this on a handful of ASUS graphics cards.

At the backside of the card you'll notice several LED lights as well. The two arrays of LEDs indicate the phase load activity on the Lightning. The GPU reactor lights up as well. Overall MSI didn't use to bright LEDs, so that all looks pretty nice overall.