Review: MSI Radeon HD 7970 Lightning
Published by Christian Ney on 18.10.12Page:
Technical data / specifications
With the Lightning series from MSI you always get a kickass graphics card that comes with the Twin Frozr cooler, a custom PCB with a beefed up power design and a high factory overclocking. The manufacturer claims that this baby is 14°C cooler and 6.3 dB quieter than the reference Design from AMD cooling wise. As for the power design, well... it is not comparable with the reference design one.
Looking at the specs, we have a graphics core clocked at 1'070 MHz. For the record the stock designed Radeon HD 7970 runs at 925 MHz and the GHz Edition at 1'000 MHz with a boost of 1'050 MHz. MSI also overclocked the GDDR5 memory, but this one is shy. Only 25 MHz over the reference card while the memory chips used (Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C) are specified to run 100 MHz higher (1'500 MHz). So if you do the maths this gives you 1'400 MHz memory clock for the Lightning and 1'375 MHz for the reference design card.
Now looking at the physical specifications of the 7970 Lightning version as said before MSI reworked the PCB, beefed up the power design and used their own cooling system. Therefore the 7970 Lightning gets a digital power design with no less than 14+2+1 phases while the reference HD 7970 has only an analogic power design with 5+1+1 phases.
Power Design Features of the 7970 Lightning:
- GPU Reactor
- CopperMOS
- Hi-c CAPs
- Golden SSC
- Dark Solid CAP
The 7970 Lightning is powered by the Twin Frozr IV dual slot cooler that features two 100mm fans with 11 blades each and five 8mm nickel-plated copper heatpipes. I was too lazy to count the aluminium fins and calculate the dissipation surface/power but trust me, it's big. The base of the cooler is made of Nickel-plated copper too.
As MSI's flagship Radeon HD 7970 it's meant to be heavily overclocked. And MSI did everything to make this possible. Apart from the power design we described above you get a switch on the card that allows you to select between two BIOS. The first one is the "safe" one that follows AMD's specs (frequencies and protections). The second BIOS when selected clocks the card to 1'070 MHz (Core) and 1'400 MHz (Memory), unlocks all protections (Disable OCP (Over Current Protection) and APS (Active Phase Switching)) and higher the clocks (2'500 vs 1'125 MHz) and powertune (460 vs 260 A) ranges. This graphics card also features Triple Overvoltage. Aka via MSI's overclocking software AfterBurner you can change the GPU/Memory and VDDCI voltages without the need of hardmods. Those voltages can also be monitored via the same software or using a Digital MultiMeter plugged to the voltage reading points located at the top of the PCB.
| Radeon HD 7970 | ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DCU II Top | MSI Radeon HD 7970 Lightning | Radeon HD GHz Edition | |
| Chip | Tahiti XT | Tahiti XT | Tahiti | Tahiti XT2 |
| Process | 28 nm | 28 nm | 28 nm | 28 nm |
| Transistors | 4.31 billion | 4.31 billion | 4.31 billion | 4.31 billion |
| GPU clock | 925 MHz | 1'000 MHz | 1'070 MHz | 1'000 MHz (Boost 1'050 MHz) |
| Memory | 3'072 MB GDDR5 | 3'072 MB GDDR5 | 3'072 MB GDDR5 | 3'072 MB GDDR5 |
| Memory clock | 1'375 MHz (5'500 MHz) | 1'400 MHz (5'600 MHz) | 1'400 MHz (5'600 MHz) | 1'500 MHz (6'000 MHz) |
| Memory interface | 384 Bit | 384 Bit | 384 Bit | 384 Bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 264'000 MB/s | 268'800 MB/s | 268'800 MB/s | 288'000 MB/s |
| TMUs/TAUs | 112 | 112 | 112 | 112 |
| Shader Cores | 2'048 (1D) | 2'048 (1D) | 2'048 (1D) | 2'048 (1D) |
| ROPs | 32 ROP | 32 ROP | 32 ROP | 32 ROP |
| TDP | 250 Watts | 250 Watts | 250 Watts | 250 Watts |
| Price (Geizhals) | 350 € | 410 € | 430 € | 400 € |
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