The Card

MSI's card uses a huge heatsink that extends far beyond the top edge of the card. Before purchase, make sure it fits your case. As mentioned before, in the HD 7970 Lightning review, I really like the yellow highlight, which adds to the card, visually.


The card is using a dual slot cooler. The plastic dome of the GPU reactor on the back of the card increases its height toward the CPU cooler side, but it should fit most motherboards without problems. We had no problems with installation on our compact mATX motherboard.


Display connectivity options include two dual-link DVI ports, one full-size HDMI port and one full-size DisplayPort. You may use all the outputs at the same time, thanks to NVIDIA Kepler's new display output controller.

An HDMI sound device is included in the GPU, too. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes HD audio and support for Blu-ray 3D movies. The DisplayPort outputs are version 1.2 which enables the use of hubs and Multi-Stream transport.


You may combine up to four GTX 680 cards from any vendor in a multi-GPU SLI configuration for higher framerates or better image quality settings.


Pictured above are photos of the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc., please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.