Introduction

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AMD's Radeon HD 7970 has been on the market for a while now. The card introduced a new shader architecture and brought numerous improvements in power consumption. It later met heavy opposition from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680, which has caused HD 7970 pricing to go down in recent weeks.

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MSI's Radeon HD 7970 Lightning is a heavily customized implementation of the HD 7970 with focus on performance and overclocking. The card uses a beefed up voltage regulation circuitry and massive dual-fan heatsink to ensure stable operation at MSI's increased clock speeds of 1070 MHz. Memory clock has gone up too, up to 1400 MHz. Thanks to recent price cuts across the HD 7900 Series, the MSI HD 7970 Lightning now retails at $520.

<table class="tputbl hilight" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<caption>
MSI HD 7970 Lightning Market Segment Analysis
</caption>
<tr>
<th scope="col"> </th>
<th scope="col">Radeon <br />
HD 6970</th>
<th scope="col">Radeon <br />
HD 7870</th>
<th scope="col">GeForce <br />
GTX 580</th>
<th scope="col">Radeon <br />
HD 7950</th>
<th scope="col"><strong>Radeon <br />
HD 7970</strong></th>
<th scope="col"><strong>MSI HD <br />
7970 Lightning</strong></th>
<th scope="col">GeForce <br />
GTX 680</th>
<th scope="col">Radeon <br />
HD 6990</th>
<th scope="col">GeForce <br />
GTX 590</th>
<th scope="col"> </th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Shader Units</th>
<td align="right">1536</td>
<td align="right">1280</td>
<td align="right">512</td>
<td align="right">1792</td>
<td align="right"><strong>2048</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>2048</strong></td>
<td align="right">1536</td>
<td align="right">2x 1536</td>
<td align="right">2x 512</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">ROPs</th>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">48</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right"><strong>32</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>32</strong></td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">2x 32</td>
<td align="right">2x 48</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Graphics Processor</th>
<td align="right">Cayman</td>
<td align="right">Pitcairn</td>
<td align="right">GF110</td>
<td align="right">Tahiti</td>
<td align="right"><strong>Tahiti</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>Tahiti</strong></td>
<td align="right">GK104</td>
<td align="right">2x Cayman</td>
<td align="right">2x GF110</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Transistors</th>
<td align="right">2640M</td>
<td align="right">2800M</td>
<td align="right">3000M</td>
<td align="right">4310M</td>
<td align="right"><strong>4310M</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>4310M</strong></td>
<td align="right">3500M</td>
<td align="right">2x 2640M</td>
<td align="right">2x 3000M</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory Size</th>
<td align="right">2048 MB</td>
<td align="right">2048 MB</td>
<td align="right">1536 MB</td>
<td align="right">3072 MB</td>
<td align="right"><strong>3072 MB</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>3072 MB</strong></td>
<td align="right">2048 MB</td>
<td align="right">2x 2048 MB</td>
<td align="right">2x 1536 MB</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Memory Bus Width</th>
<td align="right">256 bit</td>
<td align="right">256 bit</td>
<td align="right">384 bit</td>
<td align="right">384 bit</td>
<td align="right"><strong>384 bit</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>384 bit</strong></td>
<td align="right">256 bit</td>
<td align="right">2x 256 bit</td>
<td align="right">2x 384 bit</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Core Clock</th>
<td align="right">880 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1000 MHz</td>
<td align="right">772 MHz</td>
<td align="right">800 MHz</td>
<td align="right"><strong>925 MHz</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>1070 MHz</strong></td>
<td align="right">1006 MHz+</td>
<td align="right">830 MHz</td>
<td align="right">607 MHz</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Memory Clock</th>
<td align="right">1375 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1200 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1002 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1250 MHz</td>
<td align="right"><strong>1375 MHz</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>1400 MHz</strong></td>
<td align="right">1058 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1250 MHz</td>
<td align="right">855 MHz</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Price</th>
<td align="right">$340</td>
<td align="right">$330</td>
<td align="right">$380</td>
<td align="right">$380</td>
<td align="right"><strong>$450</strong></td>
<td align="right"><strong>$520</strong></td>
<td align="right">$500</td>
<td align="right">$700</td>
<td align="right">$750</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
</tr>
</table>

Packaging

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You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + Documentation
CrossFire Bridge
2x PCI-E power cable
3x Voltage measurement cable
DVI Adapter

The Card

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MSI has engineered a menacing looking card with the HD 7970 Lightning. The yellow highlights add a nice contrast to the black cooler and the silver text.

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The card requires two slots in your system.

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Display connectivity options include two single-link DVI ports, and four mini-DisplayPorts. You may use all the outputs at the same time.

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Please note that both DVI ports are single link, which means they only support up to 2048x1536. To run 2560x1440 or 2560x1600, or anything using 120 Hz, you must either have a monitor with DisplayPort input or buy an active DisplayPort to dual-link DVI adapter. These retail around $100, and I had major problems getting dual link DVI via adapter to work on the HD 7970 Lightning. I ended up buying four adapters total over the course of two weeks, and only the final one gave me a somewhat satisfying experience. Nevertheless, even with the "best" adapter I still experienced intermittent black screens or "link failures". These could be fixed by closing the game using ALT+F4 or CTRL+ALT+DEL and task manager. I asked the adapter manufacturers for firmware updates, but my adapters already had the latest firmware.
Given this nightmarish experience I strongly recommend to not use the HD 7970 Lightning with a dual link DVI monitor. Either buy a native DisplayPort monitor or buy a different graphics card.

An HDMI sound device is included in the GPU, too. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes HD audio and support for Blu-ray 3D movies. The DisplayPort outputs are version 1.2 which enables the use of hubs and Multi-Stream transport.

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You may combine up to four HD 7970 cards from any vendor in a multi-GPU CrossFire configuration for higher framerates or better image quality settings.

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Pictured above are photos of the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc., please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

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MSI installed a huge cooler on their card which uses five heatpipes and two large fans to keep the card cool.

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The metal backplate provides some additional protection for the components on the back of the card.

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Once the cooler is removed, you can see the large metal heatspreader covering important components of the card like voltage regulation circuitry. It also adds some stability to the card, to protect against bending of the PCB caused by the heavy cooler.

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On the back of the card you will find MSI's GPU reactor. Which uses an additional PCB to provide extra voltage filtering to the GPU. It has been placed that way to be as close as possible to the GPU to maximize its effect.

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A BIOS switch is used to toggle between the normal and LN2 BIOS. It is also useful to protect against failed BIOS flashes.

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Three easy to use voltage check points are located near the front edge of the card. They provide measuring access for GPU, memory and PLL voltage.

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For voltage control the card uses a CHiL 8228 controller, just like the reference design. It offers extensive software voltage control and monitoring features, and is fully supported by MSI Afterburner.

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The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

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AMD's Tahiti graphics processor introduces a new shader architecture, it is also the first GPU to be produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC. The transistor count is 4.31 billion.

Test System

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<thead>
<tr>
<th colspan="2">Test System - VGA Rev. 17</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tr>
<th width="120" scope="row">Processor:</th>
<td align="center">Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.7 GHz<br />(Ivy Bridge, 8192 KB Cache)</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td align="center">ASUS Maximus V Gene<br />
Intel Z77</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td align="center">2x 4096 MB Corsair Vengeance PC3-12800 DDR3 <br />
@ 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td align="center">WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td align="center">Antec HCP-1200 1200W</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Software:</th>
<td align="center">Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Drivers:</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">NVIDIA: 296.10<br />GTX 680: 301.24<br />ATI: Catalyst 12.3</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Display:</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">
LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600<br />
3x Hanns.G HL225DBB 21.5" 1920x1080
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1280 x 800, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
5760 x 1080, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical high-end gaming multi-monitor resolution. Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Alan Wake

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Alan Wake, released in 2012 for PC, is a highly successful third-person horror shooter that revolves around the adventures of novelist Alan Wake who has to battle the "darkness" which takes over living and dead things. Alan's signature flashlight is used to strip the forces of darkness of their protection, to make then vulnerable to conventional weapons.
The engine of Alan Wake uses DirectX 9, but features complex lighting effects which makes it a quite demanding title. We benched with highest settings.

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Aliens vs. Predator

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Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It is one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like tessellation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We use the AVP benchmark utility with tessellation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.

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Batman: Arkham City

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Batman is back on the LCD screen with Arkham City, a sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, by Rocksteady Games and WB. It was released to the PC platform in November. Batman is imprisoned in Arkham City, an infamous district of the DC Universe that contains the scum of Gotham, most of which Batman helped get in there. In order to get out he must go through scores of baddies, and encounter many of the iconic super-villains along the way. He's not entirely alone.
Batman Arkham City uses the same Unreal Engine by Epic, as Arkham Asylum, but thanks to the engine's modularity, it has been overhauled, outfitted with the latest technologies, including a graphics engine that takes advantage of DirectX 11.

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Battlefield 3

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Arguably the most anticipated online shooter title among real gamers - PC gamers, Battlefield 3 is the latest addition to some of the most engaging online multi-player shooter franchises. It combines infantry combat with mechanized warfare including transport vehicles, armored personnel carriers, main battle tanks, attack helicopters, combat aircraft, pretty much everything that goes into today's battlefields. The infantry combat is coupled with role-playing elements, which makes the experience all the more engaging. It also has a single-player campaign which added a few gigabytes to its installer.
Behind all this is a spanking new game engine by EA-DICE, Frostbite 2. It makes use of every possible feature DirectX 11 has to offer, including hardware tessellation, and new lighting effects, to deliver some of the most captivating visuals gamers ever had access to. Not playing this game on PC is grave injustice to what's in store. Faster PCs are rewarded with better visuals.

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BattleForge

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BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well-known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Elemental force choices can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we use the internal benchmark tool in DirectX 11 mode with highest settings to acquire our results.

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Call of Duty 4

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Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates. Later installments of the Call of Duty Series use the same game engine, so this test is also representative of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 performance.

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Civilization 5

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Sid Meier's Civilization V (or Civ 5 in common jargon), is the latest addition to the franchise of masterfully-crafted real-time strategy games that let you play God to a nascent civilization of your choice all the way up to the space-age. Civilization V uses large 3D worlds that are procedurally-generated, and takes advantage of hardware tessellation features offered by DirectX 11 to exponentially step up complexity of cities, models, terrains, and objects. It is also expected of this generation of GPUs to handle the larger texture loads that come with the eye-candy.

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Crysis

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After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, and forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like accurate physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are top notch, even today, yet the game still runs well on most computers.

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Crysis 2

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Crysis 2 takes the player into an alien-infested New York City. The game adds a tactical options mode that allows several approaches to attack a heavily infested enemy location. The new Nanosuit 2.0 that the player uses offers more freedom in ability use, for example multiple abilities can be used at the same time. To better accommodate a given play style weapons can be customized with silencers, laser sights or even a sniping scope.
For rendering Crytek's CryEngine 3 is used which comes with reduced system requirements compared to the first Crysis game. Since Crysis 2 is a multi-platform game, with major development focus on console, the graphics on launch day were only DirectX 9. DirectX 11 functionality was added later in a patch. We use the DX11 version and the high-res texture pack for our benchmarking.

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DiRT 3

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The latest addition to the Collin McRae Rally franchise, DiRT 3, of multi-format rally motorsport. DiRT 3 introduced more of the same great racing experience Collin McRae DiRT 2 gave you, but with better gameplay, and the new Gymkhana freestyle motor-acrobatics mode, which you'll more likely love than hate. It uses a more polished, performance-optimized version of the EGO engine, version 2.0, which takes advantage of more DirectX 11 features than version 1.0 used on Collin McRae DiRT 2, did.

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Dragon Age II

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Dragon Age II is the second game in BioWare's Dragon Age franchise and was released in March 2011. As player, named Hawke, you will be able to pick your hero from several classes and grow him over the course of the adventure. Gameplay takes you through a linear narrated story of Hawke's rise to become the legendary "Champion of Kirkwall".
BioWare's Lycium Engine has support for DirectX 11, using tessellation, advanced dynamic lighting and camera effects like depth of field. We benchmark the DX11 version with details set to highest.

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Hard Reset

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Developed by Flying Wild Hog, a studio that prides itself with the fact that its creation is PC-exclusive (bless them), Hard Reset is a first person shooter that's set in a future cyberpunk setting of a dystopian world. It reintroduces many of the gameplay mechanics that made classics such as Quake wicked fun, which today's tactical military shooters eroded, creating a 'void' for.
The game uses the studio's in-house Road Hog Engine, which isn't particularly heavy on new-generation DirectX features, but can still get taxing with some GPUs.

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Metro 2033

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Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game that is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow - as the name suggests inside the metro system. You will fight mutants or other humans who like to take away your shelter. The game has many gameplay elements similar to STALKER, also the engine has similar features. This is because two STALKER engine programmers left GSC Game World and started their own company which is now making Metro 2033.
The engine has support for all the latest eye candy like DirectX 11 and Tessellation. Unfortunately it leaves a less than optimized impression, making it a candidate to surpass Crysis for the highest hardware requirements. We test in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Very High".

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STALKER: Call of Pripyat

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STALKER: Call of Pripyat takes places shortly after the events of the previous game STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. The player is one of many stalkers who are attracted by the Zone in hope of finding fame, wealth and artifacts. Over the course of the game you meet Strelok, the protagonist of the first STALKER game and team up with him to progress through the Zone.
An updated X-Ray Engine 1.6 powers the game with support for DirectX 11 using Compute Shaders for improved shadow rendering and tessellation to improve model quality.

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StarCraft II

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StarCraft II, released in July 2010, is a sequel to Blizzard's award-winning strategy game StarCraft. In the 26th century three species Terrans, Protoss and Zerg are at war. The campaign takes you through many missions on different planets where you have to face the various enemy factions, sometimes several of them. StarCraft II features a similar number of units as the original game, some of them new. Due to the massive success of the first game, Blizzard chose to focus large aspects of the game on multiplayer combat through Battle.net. The campaign serves as a good introduction to units and concepts and competitive multiplayer is where the action is at.
The StarCraft 2 engine supports only DirectX 9, but several patches have improved rendering quality and available options considerably. We test using a recorded 1 vs. 1 multiplayer replay in the late game phase. Please note that Star Craft II is very CPU limited on high-end cards, especially on lower resolutions, so you may not see much scaling between some cards. Star Craft II does not support multi-monitor gaming, because it would provide an unfair advantage in competitive multiplayer, as a larger portion of the map would be visible.

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Total War: Shogun 2

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Set in 16th century feudal Japan, Total War: Shogun 2 takes the player on a quest for domination to conquer and unite the warlords of Japan. Moving away from the European setting of previous Total War games, the game is now designed around principles of the brilliant Chinese general Sun Tzu and his book "The Art of War". Gameplay is switched between real-time battles during which units on the battlefield are controlled and turn-based strategy which enable diplomacy, economy and production management. Taking control of a castle is comprised of several different stages which adds more complexity to warfare.
We benchmark using the highest settings in DirectX 11 mode, which was added via patch after release.

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The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

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This isn't just a game, it's a masterpiece. A very large sandbox game that rejects the quality-quantity inverse-proportionality. By genre a role-playing game, TES: Skyrim combines some of the best elements of older titles in the franchise, with some new sandbox elements to churn out an extremely engaging, and addictive game. It makes use of Bethesda's Creation Engine, which isn't visually-intensive in that it doesn't use taxing graphics features, but the game's presentation itself, with large open worlds, end up taxing your hardware. Faster GPUs result in smoother gameplay with most eye candy turned on.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

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World of Warcraft is the most successful massively multiplayer online game in the world with far over 12 million monthly subscribers. The game is centered around the epic battle between the Horde and Alliance factions with many other races getting involved in a long and complex story line. Even though it has been released in 2004, Blizzard has always added incremental improvements to the graphics, especially with new expansions. One key success of World of Warcraft is that it will run on a large number of slower systems, but also delivers a decent graphics experience on high-end systems. We test in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Ultra".

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3DMark 11

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3DMark 11 is the very latest from the house of Futuremark, which has given out some of the most comprehensive benchmark applications for PC enthusiasts and gamers. 3DMark 11, as the name might probably suggest, makes use of Microsoft DirectX 11 API, and puts every feature at its disposal to use, creating astonishingly-realistic visuals. In the process, it evaluates DirectX 11 compliant GPUs, and lets gamers know what to expect from games from the near future that make use of the API, in terms of visual realism. The tessellation and depth of field tests are particularly of interest here. 3DMark11 has no proper support for multi-monitor configurations.

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Unigine Heaven 2.0

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Unigine Heaven was one of the first demos that supported DirectX 11. Heaven is a technology demonstration for Unigine engine which supports DirectX 9 through 11 and OpenGL too. Version 2.0 adds more scenes and optionally more complex tessellation features. While there is some controversy surrounding the benchmark whether it is an accurate representation of what to expect from future games in regards to DirectX 11 we still chose it as test to get an insight into potential future gaming.

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Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs. An optimized fan profile is also one of the few things that board vendors can do to impress with reference designs where they are prohibited to make changes to the thermal solution or components on the card.

For this test we measure power consumption of only the graphics card, via PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 with 6.5 digits is used for all measurements. Again, the values here reflect card only power consumption measured at DC VGA card inputs, not the whole system.

We chose Crysis 2 as a standard test representing typical 3D gaming usage because it offers: - very high power draw - high repeatability - is a current game that is supported on all cards due to its DirectX 9 nature - drivers are actively tested and optimized for it - supports all multi-GPU configurations - test runs a relatively short time and renders a non-static scene with variable complexity.

Our results are based on the following tests:

Idle: Windows 7 Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
Multi-Monitor: Two monitors connected to the tested card, which use different display timings. Windows 7 Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
Average: Crysis 2 at 1920x1200, Extreme profile, representing a typical gaming power draw. Average of all readings (12 per second) while the benchmark was rendering (no title/loading screen).
Peak: Crysis 2 at 1920x1200, Extreme profile, representing a typical gaming power draw. Highest single reading during the test.
Maximum: Furmark Stability Test at 1280x1024, 0xAA. This results in a very high non-game power consumption that can typically be reached only with stress testing applications. Card left running stress test until power draw converged to a stable value. On cards with power limiting systems we will disable the power limiting system or configure it to the highest available setting - if possible. We will also use the highest single reading from a Furmark run which is obtained by measuring faster than when the power limit can kick in.
Blu-ray Playback: Power DVD 9 Ultra is used at a resolution of 1920x1200 to play back the Batman: The Dark Knight disc with GPU acceleration turned on. Playback starts around timecode 1:19 which has the highest data rates on the BD with up to 40 Mb/s. Playback left running until power draw converged to a stable value.

Power consumption of MSI's latest beast is much higher in all our tests, compared to the AMD HD 7970 reference design. This is especially bad in non-gaming states, as these are normally unchanged on custom designs. I can understand higher power consumption during gaming at higher clocks, which also provide higher performance, thus equalizing performance per Watt a bit.

It seems that MSI has optimized their card so much for overclocking and performance, that power consumption has suffered greatly. While this might not be a deal for enthusiast overclockers who have big PSUs and care only for performance, the typical gamer won't be too pleased with such high power consumption.

A new feature of the HD 7000 Series is AMD ZeroCore Power, which will power off the card as soon as the monitor output is blanked, during screen saver for example. For additional power and noise reduction the fan will stop in this state, too. We measured a power consumption of 1.11 Watts for the whole graphics card during ZeroCore Power. As soon as you move the mouse the PC is back immediately, there is no lag or any delay.
Please note that ZeroCore Power seems to engage only when the screen is completely static. If you have an application running that draws to the screen, the monitor will go black, but the card will not enter the low power state or return from it quickly. To avoid this, minimize all applications and let Windows sit at the desktop.

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Fan Noise

In the past years users would accept everything just to get more performance. Nowadays this has changed and people have become more aware of the fan noise and power consumption of their graphic cards.
In order to properly test the fan noise a card emits we are using a Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound level meter (~$4,000) which has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.

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The tested graphics card is installed in a system that is completely passively cooled. That is passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, passive cooling on the motherboard and a solid state drive.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified) the measurement is conducted at 100 cm distance and 160 cm over the floor. The ambient background noise level in the room is well below 20 dBA for all measurements. Please note that the dBA scale is not linear, it is logarithmic. 40 dBA is not twice as loud as 20 dBA. A 3 dBA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing is a bit different and it is generally accepted that a 10 dBA increase doubles the perceived sound level. The 3D load noise levels are tested with a stressful game, not Furmark.

In idle the MSI HD 7970 Lightning provides great noise levels, making the card almost whisper quiet. As soon as you start a game the fan will ramp up quickly and become extremely noisy. Being noisier than GeForce GTX 480 kinda tells the whole story. The fan will also constantly change speed, based on temperature which will make its presence more noticeable.

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Performance Summary

The graphs on this page show a combined performance summary of all tests and resolutions from previous pages. Each graph shows the tested card as 100% and all other cards' performance relative to it. A sixth graph summarizes all tests in all resolutions to calculate the total relative performance of the review sample.

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Performance per Watt

Using the relative performance scores from the previous page and the typical gaming power consumption result, the following graphs show efficiency of the cards in our test group.

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Performance per Dollar

If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, then you will love this graph. We looked up the current USD price of each card on the popular online shop Newegg and used it and the relative performance numbers to calculate the Performance per Dollar Index.

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Overclocking

The overclocks listed in this section were achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. Please note that every single sample overclocks differently, that's why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.

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Maximum stable clocks of our card are 1210 MHz core (13% overclock) and 1850 MHz Memory (32% overclock).

MSI HD 7970 Lightning delivers some pretty amazing additional overclocking, beyond the already overclocked stock frequencies. When compared to other HD 7900 Series cards, the overclock is much higher.

The same applies to memory overclocking, 1850 MHz is simply outstanding.

<table class="tputbl" width="425px">
<thead>
<tr>
<th colspan="3">Maximum Overclock Comparison</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col"></th>
<th align="center" scope="col">Max. GPU Clock</th>
<th align="center" scope="col">Max. Memory Clock</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="210" scope="row">MSI HD 7970 Lightning</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">1210 MHz</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">1850 MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">AMD HD 7970</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">1075 MHz</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">1715 MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">AMD HD 7950</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">1085 MHz</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">1785 MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">MSI HD 7950 TwinFrozr III</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">1020 MHz</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">1650 MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">GeForce GTX 680</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">1147 MHz</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">1833 MHz</td>
</tr>
</table>
Important: Each GPU (including each GPU of the same make and model)
will overclock slightly differently based on random production variances.
This table just serves to provide a list of typical overclocks for similar cards,
reached during TPU review.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.

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Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 15.7%.

Temperatures

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Idle temperatures are great, combined with the low noise this is a winning combination.

Load temps look to be well optimized and still leave some headroom for heavy overclocking and overvolting. Given these temps, it looks like the super-noisy fan is just a result of the increased power draw caused by the high clock speeds. MSI simply had no choice other than to make the fan run so fast, to keep the card at acceptable temperature levels.

<table class="tputbl" width="404px">
<thead>
<tr>
<th colspan="3">GPU Temperature Comparison</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col"></th>
<th align="center" scope="col">Idle</th>
<th align="center" scope="col">Load</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="210" scope="row">MSI HD 7970 Lightning</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">39°C</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">76°C</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">AMD HD 7970</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">45°C</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">78°C</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">AMD HD 7950</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">43°C</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">75°C</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">MSI HD 7950 TwinFrozr III</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">32°C</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">59°C</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">GeForce GTX 680</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">45°C</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">85°C</td>
</tr>
</table>
Important: GPU temperature will vary depending on clocks, voltage,
cooler design and production variances. This table just serves to provide
a list of typical temperatures for similar cards, reached during TPU review.

Clock Profiles

Modern graphics cards have several clock profiles that are selected to balance power draw and performance requirements.
The following table lists the clock settings for important performance scenarios and the GPU voltage that we measured. We measure on the pins of a coil or capacitor near the GPU voltage regulator.

<table class="tputbl">
<tr>
<th scope="col"></th>
<th align="center" scope="col" width="70">Core <br />
Clock</th>
<th align="center" scope="col" width="70">Memory <br />
Clock</th>
<th align="center" scope="col">GPU Voltage <br />
(measured)</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Desktop</th>
<td align="right">300 MHz</td>
<td align="right">150 MHz</td>
<td align="right">0.86 V</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Multi-Monitor</th>
<td align="right">500 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1400 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1.18 V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Blu-ray Playback</th>
<td align="right">500 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1375 MHz</td>
<td align="right">0.96 V</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">3D Load</th>
<td align="right">1070 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1400 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1.15 V</td>
</tr>
</table>

<table class="tputbl">
<thead>
<tr>
<th colspan="2">CCC Overdrive Limits</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Core</th>
<td align="right">1300 MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory</th>
<td align="right">1600 MHz</td>
</tr>
</table>

Value and Conclusion

<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>

MSI's Radeon HD 7970 Lightning is available online for $520.

</td></tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>

Large performance increase
Overclocked out of the box
Lots of additional OC headroom left
Four mini-DisplayPort outputs
Quiet in idle
Software voltage control & monitoring
Easy access to voltage monitoring points
Dual BIOS
Support for PCI-Express 3.0 and DirectX 11.1
AMD ZeroCore power for reduced power consumption

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>

No support for Dual-link DVI
Very noisy fan in 3D
Huge power consumption
High price
GPU reactor eats into upper slot space

</td></tr>
<tr><th>8.0</th>
<td>MSI's Radeon HD 7970 Lightning is a beautfully engineered custom implementation of the AMD HD 7970. It shows what can be achieved when focusing on pure performance and overclocking potential. Thanks to the increased clock speeds out of the box the HD 7970 Lightning sees an 8% performance lead over the reference HD 7970. Unfortunately this is still not enough to fight off NVIDIA's GTX 680 which offers the same performance up to 1920x1200. At 2560x1600 NVIDIA's GTX 680 is weaker, which is caused by NVIDIA's card being slower at that resolution, not by the Lightning being faster. Also you have to consider that the GTX 680 is just the basic reference design, not a specially crafted high performance version.<br />
This review introduces multi-monitor testing at 5760x1080, here the HD 7970 Lightning makes short shrift of the GTX 680 thanks to AMD's flawless Eyefinity implementation. NVIDIA's Surround failed in many of our games and delivers lower performance in most of the cases where it works.<br />
Unfortunately not everything is gold with the MSI HD 7970 Lightning. Boosting the card's performance resulted in massively increased power consumption, which generates heat that has to go somewhere. In games the cooler has to work extra hard, resulting in excessive fan noise, making it one of the noisiest cards I ever reviewed.<br />
The most frustrating problem for me was the lack of a dual-link DVI monitor connection on the HD 7970 Lightning. The two DVI ports only provide a single link each, which is not good enough for our test resolution of 2560x1600. 2560x1440 or any 3D at 120 Hz won't work either. In order to connect a dual-link DVI monitor to the Lightning, one has to purchase an active DisplayPort to DVI adapter, which costs around $100. I had to buy four different adapters before I found one that worked - most of the time. I was still plagued by intermittent link failures and black screens which would spoil any serious gaming experience. I strongly advise against trying to use this card with a dual-link DVI monitor. Either buy a monitor which has DisplayPort, or get a different graphics card. The added cost of $100 alone should be enough motivation for you. ASUS has solved this problem by adding a switch chip to their cards which is controlled by the dual BIOS selection. I hope MSI considers such a feature for their future cards.<br />
Price-wise it is very hard to justify the $520 of the MSI HD 7970 Lightning, when compared to NVIDIA's GTX 680 at $499, or cheaper HD 7970s at $450. For the typical gamer the GTX 680 is clearly the better choice. It is cheaper, faster, quieter, cooler, less power hungry and connects to all monitors without any adapter trickery. On the other hand doing hardcore overclocking with the GTX 680 is boring, limited and complex. MSI's HD 7970 Lightning offers the full package here with extensive clock and voltage control, thanks to the wonderful Afterburner overclocking software. The beefed up voltage regulation and reactor core will also help fame-seekers gain the extra advantage over the competition.
</td></tr>
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</table>