14 DAY TRIAL // Ahead of its launch, pictures containing the new MSI flagship graphics card, the GTX 980Ti, were leaked online showing all the necessary details of the OC-series GeForce GTX 980 Ti Lightning.
Pictures revealed online by VideoCardz prove how MSI put all of its engineering might into the design of the new graphics card. With a paint scheme of yellow and black, it keeps the same color layout of its predecessors, while being characterized by an even larger Tri-Frozr triple fan cooling solution.
In addition, the paint scheme and the obvious logo on the back of the PCB are a reference to the famous F-35 Lightning fighter jet, which is in the same package of objects influenced by the famous fighter as the Ford F-35 Mustang Lighting 2.
Consisting of large nickel-plated copper base, out of which 8-10mm thick heat pipes protrude outwards to two dense aluminum fin stacks, the complete air-cooling system powers a trio of 100 mm spinner.
However, the impressive cooler is just a part of this product, since the most engineering efforts went into its custom-designed 10-layer PCB, bringing a 15-phase VRM that draws power from a combination of one 6-pin and two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and many other overclocker-friendly features such as voltage measurement points, dual-BIOS with and LN2-friendly secondary BIOS, and the ability to control the speeds of individual fans.
Comparable stats, no clear winner between MSI and ASUS
The factory-overclock frequency is 1203 MHz core, from the default 1000MHz, with a 1303 MHz GPU Boost, compared to default of 1075MHz, it arrives together with a memory speed of 7.10 GHz (GDDR5-effective). At the moment, MSI's design is the most powerful factory-overclocked graphics cards out of the box, thus encouraging users to push its limits further.
This card is meant to push the limits of the already extremely powerful default GTX 980Ti to higher limits than its factory specifications. However, its out-of-the-box specs are only equal, and very much comparable with ASUS' extremely powerful STRIX-GTX980Ti-DC3OC-Gaming that has a GPU Boost of 1317MHz in OC mode.
Although prices are unknown until the launch day, it's good to know that ASUS' card comes at $669 so we can expect MSI's beast to cost somewhere around that sum of money as well.
