MSI GTX 780 Lightning 3 GB Review

Name: MSI GTX 780 Lightning 3 GB
Brand: MSI

W1zzard

on Aug 30th, 2013,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: MSI

Value & Conclusion »

Temperatures

Temperatures are well below the 80°C limit at which NVIDIA's driver will start reducing clocks, which protects the card from overheating. Even with overclocking, the temperatures stay well below that limit, opening up some headroom for voltage increases.

GPU Temperature Comparison
	Idle	Load
MSI GTX 780 LIGHTNING	30°C	75°C
MSI GTX 780 GAMING	30°C	73°C
ASUS GTX 780 DC II	35°C	67°C
EVGA GTX 780 SC	34°C	74°C
Gigabyte GTX 780	37°C	72°C
NVIDIA GTX 780	37°C	81°C
NVIDIA GTX Titan	30°C	81°C

Important: GPU temperature will vary depending on clock speed, voltage settings,
cooler design, and production variances. This table just serves to provide
a list of typical temperatures for similar cards determined during TPU review.

Clock Profiles

Modern graphics cards have several clock profiles that are selected to balance power draw and performance requirements.

The following table lists the clock settings for important performance scenarios and the GPU voltage we measured. We performed the measurement on the pins of a coil or a capacitor near the GPU voltage regulator.

	GPU Clock	Memory Clock	GPU Voltage (measured)
Desktop	324 MHz	162 MHz	0.88 V
Multi-Monitor	135 MHz	162 MHz	0.86 V
Blu-ray Playback	324 MHz	162 MHz	0.86 V
3D Load	875 - 1045 MHz	1502 MHz	1.025 - 1.150 V

The card uses NVIDIA's dynamic overclocking mechanism. It will dynamically adjust clock and voltage based on render load, temperature, and other factors.

For the graph below, we recorded all GPU clock and GPU voltage combinations of our 1920x1080 resolution benchmarking suite. The plotted points are transparent, which allows them to add up to indicate more often used values. A light color means the clock/voltage combination is rarely used and a dark color means it's active a lot.