Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor and box for more Computex coverage and once again I'm back at the msi booth this time to check out their new geforce gtx 1080 TI lightning zed graphics card firstly a big thanks to msi for bringing me here this year i wouldn't be here without them if you're in the market for a new gaming desktop pc then check out msi high-end core i7 systems also right now they're offering a free you play game key for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon wildlands with select purchases it's also possible to score a wildland game code with select MSI motherboards check out the new x99 zed 270 + h2 70 range link is in the video description one of my favorite graphics card series is MSI's lightning range the previous gtx 980ti and r9 290x models were particularly good the only issue in my opinion was the color scheme and I don't mean to say the cards weren't visually appealing quite the opposite in fact however unless you were building a black and yellow themed rig they did look a bit out of place this time around though MSI is done with a much more neutral theme using black white and silver as you might have guessed providing the bling this time as a plethora of RGB lighting though I have to say MSI has done a really nice job here in my opinion the lighting on most graphics cards even the really expensive GTX 1080i models looks pretty rubbish this thankfully isn't the case of the Lightning Zed MSI's use translucent plastic to cover the light from the source and this provides a really sleek effect it's very similar to how G skills RGB memory looks finally dodge ub lighting also ties in with MSI's mystic light fancy lighting aside the gtx 980ti lightnings that it looks to be the real deal strapped on to the PCB is a bulky two and a half slot cooler with triple tox 2.0 fans MSI calls this their tri froze a cooling solution I should point out that not all three fans are of the same dimensions the middle fan is actually slightly smaller 90 millimeters where is the to either side measure 100 millimeters the fans force air over to massive arrays of aluminium fins which are connected using over half a dozen copper heat pipes MSI tells us that the front side of the Kart is covered by a black heat spreader featuring multiple fins this heat spreader covers the usual components the memory ICS MOSFETs and so apparently there's a copper heat piper touch to the heat spreader to move heat away from the vrm components more efficiently MSI has painted this heat pipe black allowing it to blend into the heat spreader flipping the card over we find a beautifully crafted backplate featuring some cool looking cutouts through those cutouts you might have spotted a flat copper heat pipe behind the backplate this doesn't wrap around to the front side of the card rather it's intended to move heat away from the hot spots behind the GPU and inductors this is a similar idea to what gigabites done with their horas cards you know that copper insert that looks cool but doesn't actually do anything overall I feel the backplate looks better and I think this is a more sensible design that will actually work by transferring heat away from the GPU so a very cool concept by MSI and I'm keen to check it out to myself something you might have noticed as we've been looking around the card other three PCIe eight pin connectors each capable of delivering up to 150 watts of power so that's pretty insane MSI has gone with a 14 plus 3 power phase design and of course this is a doubled up design which helps spread the thermal load on board MSI uses international rectifier controllers and advertises aboard TDP of 350 watts which is 100 watts above in videos reference spec when it comes to clock speeds the Lightning's EDD supports three profiles out of the box the card runs in gaming mode which sees the cooperate at a base clock frequency of 1582 megahertz with a boost clock speed of 1695 megahertz the gddr5 X memory has also been overclocked to achieve a speed of 11 point 1 gigabits per second there's also a silent mode which lowers the core to 1400 and 80 megahertz for a brew speed of 1592 amilia Hertz and these are the reference clock speeds finally the fastest profile which is of course named lightning and this configures the core to 1600 and 7 megahertz resulting in a boost frequency of 1721 megahertz around at the i/o end of the card the display connectivity includes a dual link DVI port dual HDMI 2.0 ports and two display ports there's no word on availability or pricing it but MSI tells us to expect more details in the coming month hopefully I'll be able to secure a review sample around the same time alright guys that's it for this one thanks for watching I'm your host Steve and I'll catch you zone Oh