MSI's GeForce GTX 580 Lightning is a GTX 580 on steroids, once you played with it you don't want to go back. The card feels built like a tank and did live up to that promise during our testing. Out of the box the card comes with the highest clock speeds available on any GTX 580 retail product, yet I could easily get another 10% clock out of it without increasing voltage or fan speed. Once I pushed more voltage through the card, I managed 970 MHz, so with better cooling 1 GHz seems not too far away. I even punished the poor card with 1.35 V on air cooling, and it didn't show any problems. The card handled it just fine without showing any signs of trouble or weakness, unlike the GTX 590 we reviewed recently.
In terms of overclocking features, the GTX 580 Lightning brings pretty much a complete set. You can adjust voltages via DIP switch on the board (no software required) or using MSI's Afterburner OC software. When using subzero cooling, you have a special BIOS at your disposal that eliminates any "cold bug" problems and similar issues.
If you just skipped to this page, you are now thinking "this will be a power hungry monster" - on the contrary. The card actually consumes slightly less power than NVIDIA's GTX 580 reference design - even though it is overclocked to deliver about 5% more real-life performance. The only thing that I can really complain about is that fairly noisy fan in 3D. It seems MSI has overfocused on low temperatures, instead of trying to find the perfect balance between noise, temperatures and overclocking potential.
When compared to the ASUS GTX 580 Direct CU II, MSI's Lightning wins overclocking potential, overclocking features and dual-slot design, while the ASUS card can impress with low noise, low temperatures due to triple slot design and lower price. Overall I'm very pleased with MSI's GTX 580 Lightning - it's an awesome mix of gaming performance and avant-garde overclocking features.