# MSI Radeon HD 6970 Lightning 2 GB



## W1zzard (Apr 7, 2011)

MSI's Radeon HD 6970 Lightning is the company's new flagship single-GPU card for AMD. It offers plenty of overclocking features like triple voltage software control, voltage measurement points, a powerful cooling solution and increased clock speeds out of the box. What is even better is that those features are available at a small price premium of only $10 over the AMD reference design.

*Show full review*


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## alexsubri (Apr 13, 2011)

Wait...what?! It supports CUDA & Physx?


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## Spaceman Spiff (Apr 13, 2011)

Lol yeah, just saw that too. 

Wiz under pros you got supports cuda and physx and under cons no support for cuda and physx.

Good review though. Ill stick with my reference 6970 and oc manually.


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## reehdus (Apr 13, 2011)

just curious...how does this stack up to a powercolor 6970 hd? from what i see...the designs are pretty similar with powercolor having copper heatpipes and dual fans as well...i wonder how performance differs?


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## AsRock (Apr 13, 2011)

Spaceman Spiff said:


> Lol yeah, just saw that too.
> 
> Wiz under pros you got supports cuda and physx and under cons no support for cuda and physx.
> 
> Good review though. Ill stick with my reference 6970 and oc manually.



By the looks of it it's not even worth overclocking.


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## Spaceman Spiff (Apr 13, 2011)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_6970_Lightning/7.html

For me it is. I play BC2 with Vsync on and when I get those dips under 60fps in major sequences is incredibly frustrating. Just the 940 stock on the lightning gave a reasonable boost so I'm going to try to pump some volts and get as close to 1ghz core as I can to give myself some buffer.


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## Radys (Apr 13, 2011)

Spaceman Spiff said:


> Lol yeah, just saw that too.
> 
> Wiz under pros you got supports cuda and physx and under cons no support for cuda and physx.
> 
> Good review though. Ill stick with my reference 6970 and oc manually.



Probably he confused his standard taglines for AMD and Nvidia. I posted this before, no reply:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138744&page=2

When do I see "no support for APP and open solutions" for the Nvidia reviews? No support for SLI on AMD motherboards?


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## pantherx12 (Apr 13, 2011)

Radys said:


> Probably he confused his standard taglines for AMD and Nvidia. I posted this before, no reply:
> http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138744&page=2
> 
> When do I see "no support for APP and open solutions" for the Nvidia reviews? No support for SLI on AMD motherboards?




Whilst I kinda agree, has to be said.

Nvidia are going to start supoprt sli on amd boards.

They do support open solutions, they just push their own ones as well.

(Nvidia have better opengl support ATM)


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## Razi3l (Apr 13, 2011)

Good card though the ASUS DCII seems better. Hey W1zzard, any chance you'll ever be reviewing that?.. Which would you say is the better card for water? (I know you probably haven't tested that but.. ).
And why are you guys using Cata 11.1?.. Shouldn't you be using 11.4p? gives more performance.


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## W1zzard (Apr 13, 2011)

Razi3l said:


> any chance you'll ever be reviewing that



card has been lying here for ages, just havent had found time to review it yet


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## Razi3l (Apr 13, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> card has been lying here for ages, just havent had found time to review it yet



 
Then I hope you can sometime test it. I don't think the extra 10Mhz will do much the only main interest is the overclocking and cooling performance. So far it has had positive feedback from other reviews and has been overclocking better than the Lightning but I'd be more interested in your review since you always max out the voltage (like a bauss xD).


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## tallyhoe (Apr 13, 2011)

Did he disable OCP when he OC'd?
Why didn't he use 11.4 drivers?


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## Ryoushi (Apr 14, 2011)

Can i flash the bios on my 6950 twin frozr 3?

I wasn't able to unlock shaders


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## tallyhoe (Apr 14, 2011)

Ryoushi said:


> Can i flash the bios on my 6950 twin frozr 3?
> 
> I wasn't able to unlock shaders



Nope.   Edit: Sorry, DCII and Lightnings don't from what I've read.


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## cadaveca (Apr 14, 2011)

tallyhoe said:


> Nope.  Only reference cards can unlock to 6970s.



My nonreference card laughs in the face of this info.





Non reference cards unlock fine. Not all, of course, but many do.


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## Ray_Rogers2109 (Apr 15, 2011)

Still WoW? Nah, I'd rather play a MMO where the characters look more realistic instead of what WoW is. Oh wait, I will be again when I get my computer finished.


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## tallyhoe (May 18, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> My nonreference card laughs in the face of this info.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



What model is that you have?  What other companies with non-ref do you know of that unlock?


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