MSI N480GTX Lightning Preview – The Best Just Got Better
Conclusions
Performance – NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 480 is the fastest, single-GPU solution available in the market so far. As such, it offers incredible processing power in today’s most resource hungry games, a feat that is also shared by the N480GTX Lightning, obviously, since the card is based on the that particular graphics chip. With its increased clock, the Lightning outperforms the standard GTX 480 by 2-10% across our tests. Nothing too impressive, really.
Heatsink – As for the cooler unit, the brand new Twin Frozr III heatsink offers a significant improvement over NVIDIA’s standard HSF for the GTX 480. During full load conditions, it keeps the core temperature well below 80 degree Celsius. Excessive heat is one of the major issues that people have experienced with the GTX 480. In our lab, we once recorded a maximum temperature of 92 degree Celsius with the standard HSF, which is dangerously close to the GPU chip’s maximum threshold limit of 105 degree Celsius. With lower operating temperature, the graphics card would, hopefully, last longer.
Fermi GeForce GeForce GTX 480 GeForce GTX480 GF 100 gf100 GTX480 MSI N480GTX Lightning N480 GTX N480GTX triple over voltage Twin Frozr III
