Introduction

Last year AMD released their new Radeon HD 5800 Series of graphics cards which quickly became a big success due to the numerous improvements made over previous generations. Up to now all cards available from all manufacturers were reference design cards which means they were all made to the same specifications, using the same components and then a sticker was added on the cooler depending on the AIB.

MSI's latest member to the Lightning Series comes with a completely redesigned PCB and uses their famous TwinFrozr cooler. It also uses an increased amount of PWM phases and two 8-pin PCIe power connectors to promise more overclocking potential.

MSI has slightly increased the clock speeds on their design to 900/1200 up from 850/1200 on the reference design.