14 DAY TRIAL // Micro-Star International has several series of high-end cards, the Lightning being a particularly performance-oriented one, and the latest model, the N480GTX Lightning, has just been pictured and detailed, revealing a massive card with its own design.
The GeForce GTX 480 video card was the first model based on the Fermi architecture that NVIDIA brought to market.
This board is based on the GF100 graphics processing unit and succeeded in reclaiming the performance crown as far as single-GPU video boards are concerned.
Lately, however, the company's manufacturing partners have been focusing on the more popular GTX 460, aimed at the upper level of the mainstream.
Still, MSI decided it was time for a massive card to make its appearance, so it attended the Master Overclocking Arena (MOA) event where it reportedly showed off the N480GTX Lightning.
The video board can be said to have little to nothing in common, design-wise, with the reference version that the Santa Clara, California-based company initially supplied.
The GF100 GPU is placed on a larger PCB (printed circuit board) and is clocked at 700 MHz, not 400 MHz as the stock model was.
Also, the card comes with 480 CUDA cores, 1.5 GB of GDDR5 memory and shader and VRAM clocks of 1,500 MHz and 4,000 MHz, instead of the respective 1,401 MHz and 3,696 MHz.
The board also features dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, as well as 4-way SLI support, in addition to a Twin Frozr II cooler with two 90mm fans and five heatpipes, in addition to a backplate.
Furthermore, MSI threw in its now infamous Militray Class components, such as Proadlizer capacitors, a 16 phase PWM with a clock tuner and dual BIOS.
Finally, the video controller utilizes three 6-pin PCI Express power connectors, one of which is exclusively dedicated to powering the 1.5GB of VRAM.
As for pricing, the product is supposedly going to sell for $550.