[ULTRA micro PICOSCOPIC REVIEW] MSI N275GTX Lightning

[ionicle88]

hello all readers, i'm back again, taking a short break from my school work, with yet another graphics card review.
This time round, what i have with me is a piece of MSI N275GTX lightning, courtesy of Corbell, so lets keep the long story of gtx275 short and focus on the card itself...

Information from corbell this card is stipulated to arrive by COMEX, srp $4XX.

As usual, lets have some visual feast of the "new" monster from MSI...



Unboxing pictures first:

yup, once u take out the big paper cover, u will realise another small box in it.

Accessories provided are as follows~ ** FOR THE FIRST BATCH, HDMI CABLE WILL BE GIVEN**

and you will have 2 layers of protection for the card, a foam packaging and anti static bag itself, removing both of them, this is the card

No surprises here, even though this is the Lightning edition, u don't need anything more than 2x 6pin molex power connectors.


HOLD YOUR BREATH!!! and your eyes are not playing a trick on you, a native HDMI and a vga and a DVI-D connector... hmm where did S-video go?

[ionicle88]

Test Setup:

Alright, enough glaring at the card alone, time to piece it into the test bed for which the configurations are on the right
*surprisingly the black pcb seems to fit the color theme pretty well*


A sudden flash of blingbling on the pcb naturally drew my attention, the green light signifies the card is being powered up



O.o more lights appear when the card is being put on load. on idle its just the green light only.

For those interested in SLi, no worries, this card has a slightly shorter cooler, u will have just ample spacing for the second card. For example, here is a comparison
as opposed to my current card:

Nonetheless both still can allow for SLi or physX here is another example

A close up on the gap is this astonishing

[ionicle88]

Getting the computer ready for testing:

i loaded nforce 190.62 drivers (already avaliable on nvidia's web on 21st august) and installed all 3 MSI's Lightning Afterburn Software, which is their very own voltage control and overclocking program and evga precision and rivatuner 2.24c

Of course, when given a OC software with the card, it doesn't hurt to poke around a little. And the very first prompt that appears seems a little daunting...




So we see it.. nice stuff here... VERY very high headroom for the core until 1000MHz (i wonder which card can do that) but the ram side is a little tight with only avaliable OC until 1200MHz. fan and voltage controls are pretty standard

[ionicle88]

Testing And Overclocking:

To kick off, i had it loop 3 times of 3dmark06 and furmark, seems very stable on stock:

and ofc being the v backside itchy me, i tried to push a little clocks and O.o 21k 3dmark with just a very slight tweak!

and still not daunted @ 745MHz core!

ta-da here comes the bottleneck...
*key thing to note here, after 745MHz, the improvements over the increase of the core clock isn't significant at all, +- 100 points in 3dmark... seems like the memory is getting saturated by the core performance...

Still undaunted, i engaged help from Precision Utility
As you can see.. the scores simply doesn't increase anymore... it is very evident that the memory is still bottlenecking the core... but behold!!! a good 22k score up from the stock clock 700MHz which is already much higher than the rest of its companions out in the market.


For comparison's sake, here are 2 other OC-ed speeds and results from my past testing... pardon that the testbed for these 2 and this N275 are different, so please focus on the gcard score will do.
OC-275

Stock 285

OC-ed 285

[ionicle88]

SF4 benches:

SF4 with 4xAA @ stock


SF4 with 4xAA @ 780core


SF4 @ 780core




lightning on stock


lightning on 780core 1200memory





Conclusion: A very interesting card that just appeared on our shores amid all the commotion over the newer ATI 40nm card and the missing GT300, this lightning edition GTX275 has certainly brought overclocking to a whole new level and more down to earth for the mass. The metallic cooler has done very good job in keeping this card cool, idling at around 48deg in a non-aircon room and pretty much loads @ around 70degrees, which is well below what the stock gtx275s are offering. Having pushed gtx285 aside with its clocks, with the 'military class' design, as seen by the very metallic looking cooler, this is clearly targetted at the enthusiasts. However with the impending arrival of 5870 in mid-late october, and the still unknown price tag. users are seriously in a dilemma right now.

[ionicle88]

Originally Posted by maxsony

i want this card liao....

can remove and post again? i haven tally my post yet TYVM~

[cstrikecz]

Yeap, eyes are on this card .

[hpv500]

eh...hdmi cable nt included in the pkg?

[ly1968]

Haha so ur school work is this ,anyway this card looks nice

[ragnarok95]

Originally Posted by ionicle88

.




HOLD YOUR BREATH!!! and your eyes are not playing a trick on you, a native HDMI and a displayport and a DVI-D connector... hmm where did S-video go?

Are you sure??

How come i cannot see the display port? Only HDMI, DVI and Analog??

[maxsony]

i want to buy the card ......

$400+ np da....

money is not an issue when it come to com hardware.

[ionicle88]

Originally Posted by ragnarok95

Are you sure??

How come i cannot see the display port? Only HDMI, DVI and Analog??

typo typo... was doing something else

[ionicle88]

Originally Posted by ly1968

Haha so ur school work is this ,anyway this card looks nice

nope... was doing homework from 8-10am.. then dun want to do history homework and thought of getting started on this... one try 10.30 - 4pm.. took up a lot of my time...

Originally Posted by hpv500

eh...hdmi cable nt included in the pkg?

wait long long

[silverstone]

nice review ! btw, u bought da xigmatek case fan from SLS ?

[Michael Shoemaker]

other website reviews got show hdmi cable provided in the package.

local version don't have?