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MSI Radeon HD 7970 R7970 Lightning 3GB GDDR5 PCIe

The MSI Radeon HD 7970 R7970 Lightning has a dual DL-DVI connector, a single HDMI 1.4a port and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets. It can support a max resolution of 2560x1600 on up to three monitors. With a multi-stream hub using the mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets, the card can power up to six screens.

Based on 6 reviews

Excellent:

4
Good:

2
Average:

0
Bad:

0

Pros

Large performance increase.
Overclocked out of the box.
Lots of additional OC headroom left.
Four miniDisplayPort outputs.
Quiet in idle.
Software voltage control & monitoring.
Easy access to voltage monitoring points.
Dual BIOS.
Support for PCIExpress 3.

Cons

No support for Duallink DVI.
Very noisy fan in 3D.
Huge power consumption.
High price.
GPU reactor eats into upper slot space.

By Vortez on February 18, 2013

First let's get the bad news out of the way.By not including a DualLink DVI port MSI have abandoned those who use a large monitor. We would be happy to overlook this if an included Active DVI-Displayport adapter was included in the package but sadly...

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By APC Magazine on July 26, 2012

Since the inception of the MSI Lightning brand it's been a favourite with enthusiasts. Higher frequencies, better cooling and best-in-class power delivery, what's not to like?This is the best performance AMD card on the market. The Lightning...

80
By techPowerUp! on April 25, 2012

MSI's Radeon HD 7970 Lightning is a beautfully engineered custom implementation of the AMD HD 7970. It shows what can be achieved when focusing on pure performance and overclocking potential. Thanks to the increased clock speeds out of the box the...

80
By Hardware Canucks on April 11, 2012

The HD 7970 may be having a hard time standing out against a GTX 680 card that has it outgunned and out priced but this architecture still has plenty of life left in it. Regardless of the adversity placed in their paths, AMD’s board partners have...

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By Legit Reviews on March 30, 2012

The MSI R7970 Lighting is a well designed video card that is faster than any other Radeon HD 7970 out of the box and it still has a ton of overclocking headroom left in it!...

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By Guru of 3D on March 30, 2012

Final Words & Conclusion MSI designed a terrific card with the new Lightning. If you want something really special, look no further. It has it all, the looks, the very nice factory overclock, the (relatively) low power consumption, downright...

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By PCPer on March 28, 2012

I really became impressed by MSI video cards when the Super-Pipe GTX 285 was released all those years ago. Last year’s batch of Lightning cards impressed me even more. I was waiting to be blown away by this year’s example. Perhaps I was...

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By VR-Zone on March 21, 2012

Conclusion There are a lot of things that we like about this card - namely the aptly placed blue LEDs which will look good in any rig, generous (six) display outputs, unreal cooling performance (100% fan speed at stock gets you 33 degrees celsius at...

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By Kitguru.net on March 19, 2012

In the last month AMD’s partners have been unveiling their custom cooled graphics cards and we have already reviewed the latest Dual X HD7970 Overclock Edition from Sapphire and the HD7970 X Edition from VTX3D. Today we are looking at MSI’s...

90
By HardwareHeaven on March 16, 2012

Let's cut straight to the point, the MSI 7970 Lightning takes AMD's high end GPU to a whole new level. We have seen custom design versions before but MSI have reengineered the product from the ground up and in almost every area have made...

100