MSI 7970 Lightning Spotted at CeBIT

[Quantos]

http://www.techpowerup.com/161773/MSI-R7970-Lightning-Graphics-Card-Showcased-at-CeBIT.html

"CeBIT 2012 is kicking off tomorrow but already the show floor is buzzing with cameras taking pictures of the hardware on display. One such camera, handled by the lab501 team, spotted at MSI's booth the R7970 Lightning, a highly-customized Radeon HD 7970 targeting enthusiasts and overclockers.

Seen below, the incoming Tahiti-based card makes use of Military Class III components (Hi-c CAP, SFC, Solid CAPs) and has an oversized PCB, 14+2-phase digital power, a Twin Frozr IV dual-fan heatsink, a backplate, and something called a GPU Reactor. The R7970 Lightning also features 2048 Shader Units, a 384-bit memory interface, 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, Eyefinity 6 support, plus two DVI and four mini DisplayPort outputs. The card's clocks, price tag and release date have yet to be revealed but should be exposed soon."

Source: http://lab501.ro/stiri/cebit-2012-msi-7970-lightning-si-alte-noutati

 

[railven]

OMG when is that coming out? 6 display support? This. Could. Be. The. Card. For. Me.

 

[blackened23]

Whoa, twin frozr 4? New design, nice!

 

[wand3r3r]

Nice! This might have been worth the wait. I wonder how much it'll be.

With arguably the best warranty in GPUs (about tying with Asus) this will be the GPU to get.

 

[chimaxi83]

Delicious looking card. 650, probably. Unless Kepler launches.

 

[superjim]

I love it when AIBs put the heat spreaders over the memory/VRMs and it's even rarer to see that they extended this to the back-side too. Only problem is the price premium they command. Since we already know 28nm OCs like a boss the premium should be justified here.

 

[DrBoss]

MSI has been killing it lately with there fan designs. This thing is going to put my MSI R6950 Twin Frozer III's to shame. Can't wait to see the factory overclocking and additional headroom this gpu can achieve.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I'm confused on how crossifre bridges will work on this card. It looks like the card's shroud would be in the way of the bridges.

 

[Gloomy]

I'm confused on how crossifre bridges will work on this card. It looks like the card's shroud would be in the way of the bridges.

use a floppy bridge and thread it through?

 

[General Kenobi]

Nice card, although I won't be able to afford it. Great stuff though.

 

[tviceman]

Probably the best vendor-made heatsink and fan combo on the market.

 

[3DVagabond]

The 7870 Hawk doesn't look too bad either!

 

[General Kenobi]

I wonder what that dust removal technology means?

 

[Quantos]

Probably just the usual that the bearing is protected from dust. There are more than one way of achieving this though. We'll see specifically about.

 

[blackened23]

I love it when AIBs put the heat spreaders over the memory/VRMs and it's even rarer to see that they extended this to the back-side too. Only problem is the price premium they command. Since we already know 28nm OCs like a boss the premium should be justified here.

Surprisingly, the lightnings usually don't have a huge premium over plain cards. I know I bought my MSI lightning 580 for 509$ when the reference 580s were in the 470-499 ballpark.

I'm pretty psyched about this, might trade up to 2 of 'em. Should be dead silent (which reference requires 50% manual fan when oc'ed)

 

[chimaxi83]

Its a shame to get a Twin Frozr card just to rip off that cooler and wet the card, which is what I'd do now that the water bug has me lol.

Custom design and components, along with the work they put into power delivery and regulation, should make for a great performer (my TFIII 6950 did 1045 core and 1605 ram).

 

[frostedflakes]

I wonder what that dust removal technology means?

It's something MSI patented a while back IIRC, when you start up the computer the fans will run backward at high speed for a few seconds or something like that to help blow dust out of the heatsink. Kind of a neat feature if it actually works well, but seemed more like a gimmick to me than anything else.

Anyway, doesn't look like much has changed with the new Twin Frozr IV heatsinks except them using larger fans (looks like the 7870 Hawk still uses 70mm, but that 7970 Lightning must be 80mm). They were already great coolers, though, so not like much really needs to be changed.

 

[Tempered81]

highest quality pcb too. MSI 580 lightning XE is a boss pcb

 

[wahdangun]

what an engineering marvel but WTF with that yellow strip ???

 

[jackstar7]

what an engineering marvel but WTF with that yellow strip ???

"Those are speedholes. They make the car go faster."

 

[videogames101]

"Those are speedholes. They make the car go faster."

Do want!

 

[skipsneeky2]

what an engineering marvel but WTF with that yellow strip ???

Plenty of old school muscle cars had them,especially the old mopars of the late 60s,early 70,s,so i guess they kinda wanna use them sorta in a"this is super fast"sorta fashion i guess.

Me i love the strip,it looks sweet.

 

[3DVagabond]

what an engineering marvel but WTF with that yellow strip ???

Don't they have racing stripes in Jakarta?

 

[96Firebird]

This is the card that many here were waiting for, right?

 

[Stuka87]

MSI always builds great cards. I am sure this will be no exception.