Tuesday, August 20th 2013
MSI GeForce GTX 780 Lightning Pictured
Ahead of its launch, pictures of MSI's GeForce GTX 780 Lightning graphics cards were leaked to the web by HardwareZone (now redacted), and reposted by WCCFTech. Pictures reveal never before seen PCB and cooler designs. To begin with, MSI is using a brand new cooling solution called TriFrozr. It combines a large compound dual fin-stack heatsink, to which heat is fed by seven 8 mm-thick heat pipes, with an array of three fans, two larger 100 mm ones on the edges, and a smaller 70 mm one in the center. The fans feature independent control system, which lets you tweak speeds of individual fans, over software. An LED-lit badge doubles up as a GPU load indicator. A swanky back-plate lines the reverse side.
Under this elaborate cooling solution is a brute of a PCB. Drawing power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the custom-design PCB by MSI features a 20-phase digital PWM voltage regulation, which use a combination of high current chokes, International Rectifier PowIRstage, DirectFET chips, tantalum capacitors, and MSI's GPU Reactor module that cuts out electrical noise. The GPU is wired to 7 GT/s rated Elpida-branded memory chips, and three (that's right, three) GPU BIOS ROMs. One stores a failsafe reference BIOS, another factory-OC air BIOS, and one that primes the GPU for liquid-nitrogen cooling-assisted overclocking. MSI is expected to launch the GTX 780 Lightning on August 28, 2013, priced around $800.
Source:
WCCFTech
Under this elaborate cooling solution is a brute of a PCB. Drawing power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the custom-design PCB by MSI features a 20-phase digital PWM voltage regulation, which use a combination of high current chokes, International Rectifier PowIRstage, DirectFET chips, tantalum capacitors, and MSI's GPU Reactor module that cuts out electrical noise. The GPU is wired to 7 GT/s rated Elpida-branded memory chips, and three (that's right, three) GPU BIOS ROMs. One stores a failsafe reference BIOS, another factory-OC air BIOS, and one that primes the GPU for liquid-nitrogen cooling-assisted overclocking. MSI is expected to launch the GTX 780 Lightning on August 28, 2013, priced around $800.
32 Comments on MSI GeForce GTX 780 Lightning Pictured
Just one thing - Elpida and not Samsung = :\
- Also a $150 price increase is too much.
is the principle with memory on NVidia cards the same as AMD. elpida maxes at around 1600mhz where Hynix/Samsung maxes at around 1800+ (2000mhz was topped on lightning I believe)
and I think I prefer the evga or asus 780 for looks.
MSi often releases its lightning series cards when all other companies have already submitted their top notch products.
I am confident, I hope to find it on sale here too.
That being said, I'd only buy it if it easily beats what my current card does at 1.1GHz. Note for W1zzard, can we have an overclocked Titan thrown into the mix for any comparisons on it's review? It's a pain in the tits when stock Titan faces overclocked 780 models. Main issue is wanting to know how the clocks differ to get the same performance.
Most people in the market for these or similar cards are already aware that the Samsung modules are in very short supply (EVGA's Jacob Freeman has previously explained the situation regarding the Lightning's principle competitor).
Just my opinion of course. As a designer, I'm naturally very critical of things like that, particularly when its in an area I'm personally interested in.
With the above card, I don't quite understand the yellow fan. None of the other Gaming/lightning cards feature coloured fans (apart from a bit on the stickers), so the lack of consistency seems a bit daft there.
:)