MSI Radeon HD 6970 Lightning 2 GB

Introduction

AMD's Radeon HD 6970 has been on the market for quite a while now. Recently we have seen an influx of new custom designs from many AIBs that build on the foundation laid out by the HD 6970 reference version but improve on points like overclocking, features or cooling.

MSI's Radeon HD 6970 Lightning is the company's flagship HD 6970 designed with gamers and overclockers in mind. Being offered at $370, the MSI HD 6970 Lightning is only marginally more expensive than the reference design which will help to make it attractive to buyers who would usually go with a cheap reference design.

	Radeon HD 6870	Radeon HD 5870	Radeon HD 6950	GeForce GTX 570	GeForce GTX 480	Radeon HD 6970	MSI HD 6970 Lightning	GeForce GTX 580	Radeon HD 5970
Shader units	1120	1600	1408	480	480	1536	1536	512	2x 1600
ROPs	32	32	32	40	48	32	32	48	2x 32
GPU	Barts	Cypress	Cayman	GF110	GF100	Cayman	Cayman	GF110	2x Cypress
Transistors	1700M	2154M	2640M	3000M	3200M	2640M	2640M	3000M	2x 2154M
Memory Size	1024 MB	1024 MB	2048 MB	1280 MB	1536 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	1536 MB	2x 1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	320 bit	384 bit	256 bit	256 bit	384 bit	2x 256 bit
Core Clock	900 MHz	850 MHz	800 MHz	732 MHz	700 MHz	880 MHz	940 MHz	772 MHz	725 MHz
Memory Clock	1050 MHz	1200 MHz	1250 MHz	950 MHz	924 MHz	1375 MHz	1375 MHz	1002 MHz	1000 MHz
Price	$220	$270	$290	$350	$400	$360	$370	$500	$580