MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning 6GB Review

In the high end MSI have earned a reputation over the years for creating some of the finest video cards known to man. Today we take a look at one of their latest flagship offerings - the GTX 980 TI Lightning. This card ships with a beautiful triple fan cooler and is supplied in a heavily overclocked state. You know this card is serious when you see that it incorporates not two, but three PCIe power connectors. MSI also include an adjusted cooling bracket included that is intended for use alongside LN2 pots in order to draw heat away from the MOSFETs. The Lightning is not a card for the faint of heart - at £659.99 inc vat, the price of admission will be too high for many. GPU GeForce GTX960 Geforce GTX970 GeForce GTX980 Geforce GTX 980 Ti Geforce GTX Titan X Streaming Multiprocessors 8 13 16 22 24 CUDA Cores 1024 1664 2048 2816 3072 Base Clock 1126 mhz 1050 mhz 1126 mhz 1000 mhz 1000 mhz GPU Boost Clock 1178 mhz 1178 mhz 1216 mhz 1075 mhz 1076 mhz Total Video memory 2GB 4GB 4GB 6GB 12GB Texture Units 64 104 128 176 192 Texture fill-rate 72.1 Gigatexels/Sec 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec 176 Gigatexels/Sec 192 Gigatexels/Sec Memory Clock 7010 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz Memory Bandwidth 112.16 GB/sec 224 GB/s 224 GB/sec 336.5 GB/sec 336.5 GB/sec Bus Width 128bit 256bit 256bit 384bit 384bit ROPs 32 56 64 96 96 Manufacturing Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm TDP 120 watts 145 watts 165 watts 250 watts 250 watts The Nvidia GTX980 Ti ships with 2816 CUDA cores and 22 SM units. The memory subsystem of the GTX980 Ti consists of six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit) with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. The MSI GTX980 Ti Lightning 6G has received a clock boost over Nvidia’s reference card, with final speeds set at 1,203 mhz(core)/1,304mhz (boost). The memory is also overclocked, from default speeds of 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective) to 1,774mhz (7.1Gbps effective). The MSI box artwork is rather bright and eye catching. 'Built to be Perfect' is a tagline we don't see often. The rear of the box focuses on the cooling and it points out the 'OC' letter on the yellow part of the cooler shroud. MSI claim the use of 'Military Class 4 components' ensuring the highest levels of stability. There is also mention of the 'Mystic Lights' - which is basically a customisable lighting system positioned at the top of the card. The lighting by default is set to yellow. The bundle includes literature on the product, including a 'Quick User's' guide. MSI forms the accessory bundle from a long, flexible SLI ribbon, a 6-pin to 8-pin PCIe power adapter, and three cables for the V-Check voltage reading points. There is also an adjusted cooling bracket included that is intended for use alongside LN2 pots in order to draw heat away from the MOSFETs. This is an attractively designed card, and we can see the 'OC' lettering in yellow which surround the first and third fan. If it wasn't for the box pointing this out specifically I would have missed it. The triple fans are graded as 'Torx' fans which are said to produce high levels of airflow while maintaining low noise levels. The card dimensions are L=330mm, W=140mm, H=53mm. The card is 2.5 slots thick and is equipped with a high grade, branded backplate. A backplate is a great inclusion, although it is somewhat expected on such a high end board. It will not only protect sensitive components, but lower the temperatures of PCB hotspots. Quite surprising to see a *warranty void if removed sticker on one of the screws - especially as this GPU is clearly supporting LN2 overclocking. This seems to be a policy of MSI in general, as they also apply these stickers to the screws on their laptop computers. After speaking with their team, they will honour the warranty if problems would occur. Well As long as the user hasn't been hamfisted with the product and caused the problems himself. This card is equipped with two 8 pin power connectors and a single 6 pin power connector as well. MSI are trying to ensure the PCB can get plenty of power, especially if you plan on overclocking with Liquid Nitrogen. It is not surprisingly, fully SLi capable in multiple card configurations. The Lightning is equipped with a DVI port, a full sized HDMI 2.0 port (supporting 60hz at Ultra HD 4k), and three full sized DisplayPort connectors.If you wish, you can use all these ports at the same time for triple monitor gaming. Above, the photos show the PCB with the cooler and backplate removed. Surprisingly, the backplate doesn't make contact so is useful only for convective and radiative cooling. Direct contact would seem like a wise choice on this card. The card uses a 12+3 phase power delivery system. GPU operation is handled by twelve phases which consists of twelve chokes, 24 470 microfarad flad capacitors, and twelve of International Rectifiers' IR3555M 60A MOSFET solutions. Memory power is handled by three phases but the MOSFETs are changed to a toal of six (for three phases) hi- and low-side units. Control is handled by International Rectifiers' IR3595A, IR3570A, IR3897, and six IR3599 phase doublers for the GPU core power delivery section. Above, we can see the V-Check points (as well as fan headers) and dual BIOS switch. We have reviewed many GTX980 Ti's this year - as we know the core is built on the 28nm process. It is equipped with 96 ROPS, 176 texture units and 2816 CUDA Cores. The 6GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1,774 mhz (7.1Gbps effective) and is connected via a 384 bit interface. The core on the Lightning card is overclocked to 1,203mhz with a boost speed set at 1,303mhz, although the typical recorded GPU clock during gaming is 1418MHz. For the review today we are using the Nvidia 355.60 driver in order to keep test results consistent with competing GTX 980 Ti solutions. Comparison AMD cards use a mixture of the 15.201.1102 driver and the 15.7.1 driver, each of which were the latest at their respective time of testing. We will be testing using the 2560×1440 and 3840×2160 (4K) resolutions as we feel that most people buying a £600+ graphics card are likely to be gaming at 1440P or above. We test using the AOC U2868PQU 4K monitor that scored highly in our review that can be found HERE. AOC's 28" offering is one of the most affordable 4K monitors on the market and makes the realms of 4K gaming more accessible to a wider audience. Test System Processor: Intel Core i7 5960X ES (4.4GHz OC). Memory: 16GB (4x 4GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz DDR4. Motherboard: Asus X99-Deluxe. System Drive: 500GB Samsung 840. CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i. Case: NZXT Phantom 630. Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1000W. Operating System: Windows 7 Professional with SP1 64-bit. Comparison Graphics cards: AMD R9 295X2 (Catalyst 15.7.1) AMD R9 Fury X (Catalyst 15.7.1) AMD R9 Nano (Catalyst 15.201.1102 – R9 Nano launch driver) Sapphire R9 380 ITX Compact (Catalyst 15.201.1102 – R9 Nano launch driver) Nvidia GTX Titan X reference (ForceWare 355.60) EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified ACX 2.0+ (ForceWare 355.60) Nvidia GTX 980 Ti reference (ForceWare 355.60) Asus GTX 980 STRIX OC (ForceWare 355.82) Asus GTX 970 DCU Mini (ForceWare 355.82) Software: Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3DMark Fraps Steam Client MSI Afterburner TechPowerUp GPU-Z Games: Battlefield 4 Bioshock Infinite Grand Theft Auto V Metro: Last Light Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Tomb Raider Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia. 3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance. Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good. To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.” These scores are class leading, and at both resolutions, the MSI GTX980 Ti Lightning is top of our 'single GPU' chart - behind the dual GPU R9 295X2. Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable: Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems Multicore CPU support Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles) Powerful C++ API Comprehensive performance profiling system Flexible XML-based data structures We set Quality to 'Ultra', Tessellation to 'Normal', Anti Aliasing to 2x, and the resolution to 2560x1440. Tessellation performance is exemplary, falling only a couple of frames per second behind the AMD R9 295X2. Battlefield 4 ’s single-player Campaign takes place in 2020, six years after the events of its predecessor. Tensions between Russia and the United States have been running at a record high, due to a conflict between the two countries that has been running for the last six years. (Wikipedia). For 2560x1440 testing, we opted for Battlefield 4's Ultra preset. When testing with the demanding 4K resolution, we opted for Battlefield 4's High IQ preset in order to make playable frame rates a greater possibility. Our frame rates are recorded using a section of the game. Performance at both 1440p and 4K is superb - topping the charts, alongside the eVGA GTX980 Ti Classified. AMD's R9 295X2 is still the performance king, although it is a dual GPU solution. Set in 1912, in Bioshock Infinite, players assume the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the flying city of Columbia on a rescue mission. His target? Elizabeth, imprisoned since childhood. Bioshock Infinite is set to its highest image quality settings at both resolutions. We test a section of the game. In our previous graphics card reviews we have removed the game’s minimum FPS reading as our current test method seems to be imposing an unjustified penalty against AMD cards so we are looking into this issue. The same charting process is conducted for this review. At 1440p this card is clearly overkill, averaging 126 frames per second. When we increase the resolution to Ultra HD 4K, frame rates still average over 60 frames per second. In real world terms the MSI GTX980 ti Lightning powers through this engine at any resolution. Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia). We set all of GTA V's settings to their highest levels for both resolutions but made sure to disable the performance-crippling MSAA settings. We saw the game use almost 4GB of VRAM at 2560x1440 and around 4.5GB at 4K (where possible with the relevant video cards). The built-in benchmark is used to gather performance data. Performance data from the AMD R9 295X2 unfortunately could not make it into the charts as the card has a bug with our test monitor that prevents GTA V's benchmark from operating. At 1440p the game averages over 80 frames per second with a couple of dips just below 40fps. At Ultra 4K the real world gaming experience is not bad, although at these very high image quality settings we would recommend SLi or Crossfire to get those ultra smooth frame rates. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools. We opted for the High quality setting at 4K and Very High for 1440P testing. AA was kept off, AF was applied as 16x, and tessellation was set to normal. The minimum FPS readings do not highlight anything more important than very occasional drops in one of the three runs. The built in benchmark runs a rather intensive set of tests which deliver much lower minimum frame rates than you are ever likely to see when playing the game. At 1440p the game experience is very smooth, averaging over 90 frames per second. At 4K the engine is very taxing, and average frame rates drop to 60 fps. While the graph above shows a drop to single digits running the benchmark, in the real world, the minimum we saw were around the 25-30 fps mark. In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, the player plays as a ranger by the name of Talion who has wraith-like abilities.In this open world video game, players have the freedom to pursue side quests and roam around the world. We used Shadow of Mordor's Very High image quality preset for both resolutions and tested using the built-in benchmark. 1440p is a dream, and these frame rates would work well with a new 120hz or 144hz panel. At Ultra HD 4k the frame rates drop to an average just above 60, with a minimum frame rate of 48. No problems powering this engine at either setting - although if you demand a constant 60 frames per second then you would need to play with the image quality settings. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia). We test using the Ultimate quality profile for both resolutions. The in-game benchmark is used. At 1440p the frame rate never drops below 80 frames per second and as expected, the real world gaming experience is sublime. At Ultra HD 4k the game still runs well, holding above 40 frames per second at all times and maintaining an average around 52. A simple tweak to the image quality settings would increase engine performance to hold 60fps at all times - even at 4k. Impressive. The tests were performed in a controlled room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25°C – a comfortable summer environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 15 minutes. Gaming measurements were acquired by repeating the GTA V benchmark for 15 minutes and taking the stabilised reading. All fan settings were left on automatic. Thermal performance of MSI's thick, triple-fan cooler is superb. The fans do not spin under low load in order to minimise noise output. When the card is loaded with a game the fans seem to target a speed level which has the GPU core operating around the 66C mark. Despite not making direct contact with the card's PCB, MSI's backplate seems to be spreading the heat quite effectively. We detected a hot spot on a thick metal section of the cooler close to the Lightning logo. Good results. We measure graphics card acoustic emissions in our test system while all other fans are disabled, leaving our Corsair H100i's pump unit as the sole noise-producing component. We measure at a distance of around 1m from the front of the test system and around 1m from the ground. The positioning of a graphics card's AIO liquid cooler (if the card has one) will have a noticeable effect on the recorded sound level and the system's perceived loudness. Unfortunately the city-centre positioning of my test location creates a relatively high ambient noise level of a little over 40 dBA. This has an effect on the perceived loudness of each card at the lower end of the noise scale. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA - High Quality Computer fan 40dBA - A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA – Threshold of Pain 140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum The use of three 90mm fans with a thick heatsink means that the blowers can spin at a low (therefore quiet) speed while still producing solid thermal performance. This is what we see with MSI's GTX 980 Ti Lightning which is practically inaudible over our background even when running GTA V at 4K. Coil whine was not an issue with MSI's chosen power delivery components. We measure the amount of power drawn from the wall by the entire test system. Our Core i7-5960X CPU is heavily overclocked and has a large bearing on the power draw readings when it is heavily loaded in GTA V (our chosen game for system readings). The important information is the difference in power draw levels between each card. The MSI GTX980 Ti Lightning takes power from three separate power connectors - two 8 pin connectors and an additional 6 pin power connector. MSI are making sure that those people who use LN2 to overclock will never run into power delivery issues. As we can see, this MSI card takes more power at the wall than the AMD Fury X and Nvidia Titan X. We know that the GM200 GPU has far more headroom in it than reference or board partner speeds would suggest, so we pushed to see how far we could overclock the MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning card. We managed to push the GPU core by a further 70MHz and this value seemed to be consistent whether or not we increased the core voltage. Memory was overclocked to a mighty 2,000mhz, or 8Gbps effective. The GPU core was hitting a maximum clock speed of 1500MHz during gaming. Manually tweaking the MSI GTX980 ti Lightning reaps reward - although we would imagine a portion of the audience considering a purchase will take it a stage further and remove the cooler, then watercool the card. Nvidia's GTX980 ti has been dominating the high end graphics sector now since it was released, and with modified, overclocked partner cards widely available this year the situation hasn't changed. These partner solutions take performance levels a stage further, but none quite as much as the MSI GTX980 Ti Lightning OC model we analysed today. First impressions are positive. There is no doubt that this Lightning card is a looker - we love the yellow accenting on the first and third fans, which spell out 'OC'. The metal construction and backplate are reassuring, after all if you have just spent £659.99 then you will demand something substantial. The GTX980 Lightning is 33cm long so a little care will be needed on case selection, otherwise you may run into fitting issues during installation. In operation, the card is a little heavy on the power demand, although this is an intentional move by MSI, to ensure that overclocking capabilities are not limited. Incorporating two 8 pin and a single 6 pin PCIe power connector is an clear indication that MSI are taking performance overclocking seriously. The substantial cooler copes very well however, holding the thermals at 66c under extended load. We were a little surprised to see that the backplate doesn't make direct contact although measurements with our thermal imaging camera did indicate that backplate temperatures hold at 62c while heatsink temperatures hold steady around 73c. Excellent results. We don't test with Liquid Nitrogen, so we are unable to verify if the potential power delivery and PCB design help to reach ultra high limits, but with the installed air cooler we could only manage a 6% core overclock. The GDDR5 memory responded well to manual overclocking - stable at 2,000mhz, or 8Gbps effective. You can buy directly from Overclockers UK for £659.99 inc vat HERE. It isn't cheap, but you do get a lot for the money. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. Pros: beautiful design. backplate. customisable lighting. excellent bundle included. high 'out of the box' speeds. quality, Torx triple fans incorporated. plenty of power delivery available from 2x8pin and 1x6pin header. Cons: overclocking this card on air seems limited. expensive. 2.5 slot design. KitGuru says: The MSI GTX980 Ti Lightning is one of the fastest graphics cards that money can buy. This is clearly designed for the hard core gamer, and overclocking enthusiast.