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MSI Radeon HD 5870 R5870 Lightning 1GB GDDR5 PCIe

Based on 12 reviews

Excellent:

9
Good:

1
Average:

0
Bad:

2

Pros

Factory overclocked with warranty support; custom cooling solution.
Excellent cooler, Silent fans, HDMI cable included, High-quality components used
Engineered for extreme overclocking, Software voltage control via Afterburner, Good overclocking potential, DirectX 11 support, Dual 8pin power connectors, Native HDMI output, Voltage monitoring support, GDDR5 memory, HDMI cable included, Support for AMD.
Loads of highend features, Effective cooler, Impressive overclocking performance

Cons

Pricier than the competition; limited success in actually overclocking.
A slightly overclocked core is completely pointless
Extremely noisy cooler, Overclock out of the box is rather slim, Slightly higher power consumption than reference design, GPU mounting mechanism doesn't seem to be ideally designed, DirectX 11 won't be relevant for quite a while, No support for CU
Memory overclocking is poor, Stock clock speeds are a tad conservative.

By Ocaholic on October 04, 2010

General +-Quick and easy: This card simply is a dream! Due to the new cooler the card is more silent and therefore does it's job better than ATIs reference. Also with 27 Watts dissipation power in 2D mode you can even have a clear conscience when...

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By Maximum PC on July 14, 2010

MSI revamps the reference design inside and out Factory overclocked graphics cards seem too good to be true. You get increased performance plus the manufacturer’s warranty. XFX’s Radeon HD 5870 XXX was the first factory-OC’d version of...

60
By Kitguru.net on June 15, 2010

Goodness gracious, great balls of...

90
By Tech2 on June 11, 2010

SpecificationsGPU: Radeon HD 5870; Core | Memory speed: 900 MHz | 1200 MHz; Video memory: 1 GB GDDR5; Memory bus width: 256-bit; DirectX support: 11; Video outputs: 2x DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. Test RigOur test rig ran the Intel Core i5-655K on the...

90
By AnandTech on June 01, 2010

Next up we have MSI’s Radeon HD 5870 Lightning, the latest in their line of overclocker-focused video cards. The 5870 Lightning is perhaps the boldest Lightning yet, deviating quite a bit from the 5870’s reference design. click to enlargeAt...

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By HotHardware on May 06, 2010

Before running a single benchmark, it was easy to postulate the outcome of our testing. Now that the scores are in, Gigabyte's Super Overclock has established itself as the undisputed performance leader. It consistently racked up the highest scores...

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By Overclock3D on April 12, 2010

If you are one of those people who only reads reviews of certain products, or dismisses these tweaked models as expensive versions of the reference design, you could be forgiven for wondering why we even bother to test them. After all, we know the...

77
By Legion Hardware on April 07, 2010

The MSI R5870 Lightning is an impressive graphics card with a number of unique design aspects. In terms of features, build quality and overclocking abilities, it is by far the best Radeon HD 5870 graphics card that we know of. The fact that we could...

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By HEXUS.net on March 15, 2010

MSI set out to create the finest Radeon HD 5870 graphics card that money can buy. Based on the fastest single-GPU gaming card at the time of writing, MSI has thrown everything, including the kitchen sink, at the R5870 Lightning.Starting off with a...

60
By Guru of 3D on March 15, 2010

Intriguing is what the the R5870 Lighting really is. It is one of the finest 5870 cards currently available, if not the most interesting and fastest single GPU based graphics card obtainable on the market. In every foreseeable way the Lightning has...

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