Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 came as a surprise to many, who didn't expect NVIDIA could pull off another high-end GPU release in 2010. The new card delivers significantly improved performance over the GTX 480, while keeping power consumption in check and emitting reduced noise levels.

MSI taken this successful base design and customized it on their GTX 580 Lightning. "Lightning" series has been MSI's flagship series of high-end graphics cards geared toward overclockers and enthusiasts who are not afraid of using more exotic cooling foms like liquid nitrogen or dry ice. The card sports many features for that crowd, like triple voltage control, voltage measuring points, DIP switches and a dual BIOS feature. Thanks to MSI's excellent Afterburner overclocking software, which fully supports the card, software based overclocking is also a breeze.

In terms of pricing, MSI asks a $20 price increase which at first look, seems justified considering the considerable overclock out of the box.