MSI N275GTX Lightning specs and features

MSI N275GTX Lightning specs and features

Alright, you've been able to read all about the reference design on the previous page. Let's have a peek at what MSI has to offer with this |SKU and how they improved that MSI N275GTX Lightning.

So from ground up, this graphics card has nothing to do with NVIDIA other than the fact that a GT200 chip is on there, seriously this design is a complete overhaul in all it's ways and manners. This is also the main reason why products like shown today always arrive on the market a little later. The research and development time plus bin-speed is just much longer due to the redesign and customizations.

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
• GPU Clock: 700MHz
• Memory Clock: 2300MHz
• Memory Size: 1792MB GDDR3 (0.8ns)
• Military Class (Hi-c CAP/SSC/Solid CAP) for the highest quality components
• 10 Phase PWM for stable power supply under overclocking
• APS dynamic phase adjustment for 93% power efficiency
• Twin Frozr II thermal design is 23°C cooler than reference design
• SuperPipe technology provides 90% better cooling efficiency with 8mm thickest heatpipe
• V-Check Points for easy voltage measurement of GPU and memory
• Lightning Afterburner utility for overvoltage and overclocking in Windows.

read that ? That makes the MSI N275GTX Lightning quite extraordinary ... let's have a chat about it's special features. What you need to bare in mind is that MSI built this card with three primary features in mind. The first is building an extremely high quality product made out of the best components, they make it as overclockable as possible and last but not least .. it needs to remain silent.

These three key features translate themselves into the following design changes.

First off, and I know you guys puke a little when you hear the phrase 'Military Class components', but hear me out.  Next to the custom PCB, MSI not only used the very best components on this graphics cards. They label it as Military Class components as they in fact follow US Department of Defense MIL-PRF-39003L guidelines in terms of build quality and heat levels.

And while that phrase helps with marketing the product, it does translate itself into the use of high quality capacitors, Hi-C (Tantalum core) caps and Solid Core chokes. Usage of components like this reduce heat levels, this increases life-span but also help in two other ways, better overclocking and the second one .. noise. Everybody has had a graphics card that made buzzing noises once in their life right? Thanks to usage of ferrite core chokes that's simply not possible anymore.

Power design then, I already stated the custom (10 layer) PCB, and that really is the case. To make it as stable and overclocking friendly as possible a ten phase power design was implemented: the GPU has eight phases available and the memory two. In comparison, the reference design GTX 275 has four phases for the GPU and two for memory.

Related to the ten power phases is MSI's APS, which is short for Active Phase Switching. Despite being a beefy graphics card, the product can disable several phases when the card is in idle, this preserves energy and makes the card a little greener. It's not a huge deal , but overall you can shave off another 5 to 10 watts of power that way and in the energy aware era, every little bit helps.

Memory configuration then. You'll notice that the MSI N275GTX Lightning has it's memory configuration doubled up. Not because it's needed, no .. simply because this is their most high-end GTX 275, nothing is spared for this card. The reality is that 1792 MB of memory will make very little difference in current games opposed to the standard 896 MB. But one thing is a sure fact, you'll have enough frame buffer to work with for a long time. The one title that does benefit from this is GTA 4 actually.

V-check points -- Always funny to see are little additional extra's for real enthusiasts, you'll notice two jumper like positions on the graphics card (we'll show you in our photo-shoot) on which you can plug a cable (delivered with the card), pop your multimeter in there and now you can monitor voltages fired off at the GPU and memory. A little extreme I know, but cheap as heck to implement for MSI, and .. well it is yet another feature of course.

Cooling then, the MSI N275GTX Lightning comes with the all new Twin Frozr cooling solution. A heatpipe based system that has two 80mm fans blowing over 5 heat pipes. Two of these heat pipes are 8mm thick, the biggest you'll find in the industry really. It will keep the card at very reasonable temperatures AND remains really silent, which we like very much. The cooling solution also extends further, underneath the heatpipe cooler you'll notice a Memory/MOSFET heatsink as well.

In it's basic design the card comes a little pre-overclocked as well. The core clock frequency is set at 700 MHz, shaders remain standard at 1400 MHz and the memory clock is set at 2300 MHz. The card also comes with Afterburner software allow a little voltage tweaking to help you overclock even further. We'll discuss that in our overclock session though.

So the price of this product is actually still under 300 EUR competing with the GeForce GTX 285 which makes sense if performance is roughly at the level of a GeForce GTX 285, which it is.

Anyway let's have a look at the bundle and packaging.

Packaging and Accessories, included in the box ye shall find:

• MSI GeForce NGTX275 1792MB
• Driver CD / manual / quick install guide
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• VGA->DVI dongle
• DVI -> HDMI dongle
• HDMI cable
• SP/DIF cable
• Voltage monitoring cables (x2)

A complete package to get you up and running after you purchased the product. We like that an actual HDMI cable is included.

Check that out: what an immense load of features eh? You'll also get connectivity in the form of Dub-D (VGA, DVI and HDMI connector. Anyway, let's move onward to the photo gallery as we have quite a lot to cover.