Introduction
Last year MSI launched the R7970 Lightning, a graphics card based on the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and aimed at overclockers. It has since been replaced by the R7970 Lightning Boost Edition. Same concept, same price, but with improved performance. Reason enough for Hardware.Info to also review this video card.
Basically two things were changed compared to the previous iteration. The R7970 Lightning Boost Edition is built around the AMD Tahiti chip, the same one used in the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. The other difference is that the Boost Edition has newer firmware and different clock speeds.
The standard GPU clock frequency of the Boost Edition is the same as that its predecessor, 1070 MHz. The Turbo mode automatically goes up to 1150 MHz when the load requires it. The memory clock speed has been raised from 1400 MHz to 1500 MHz, which means the new model is slightly faster than last year's.
Here you can see the differences between the old and new models:
| General | ||
|---|---|---|
 |  | |
| Brand | MSI | MSI |
| Product name | R7970 Lightning | R7970 Lightning Boost Edition |
| Product code | R7970 LIGHTNING | R7970 LIGHTNING BE |
| Details | ||
| Specifications | ||
| 3D chip | AMD Radeon HD 7970 | AMD Radeon HD 7970 |
| Graphics card series | AMD Radeon HD 7000 | AMD Radeon HD 7000 |
| DirectX version | DirectX 11.1 | DirectX 11.1 |
| Interface | PCI-Express 3.0 x16 | PCI-Express 3.0 x16 |
| Memory - Amount | 3072 MB | 3072 MB |
| Memory - Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Clock frequency - GPU | 1070 MHz | 1070 MHz |
| Clock frequency - Turbo | 1150 MHz | |
| Clock frequency - Memory | 1400 MHz | 1500 MHz |
| TV tuner |  | |
| Temperature sensor |  | |
| GPU cooling | Active (2x) | Active (2x) |
| Memory cooling | | |
| Extra power connector | | |
| Power connector type(s) | 2x PEG8 | 2x PEG8 |
| D-Sub connector | | |
| D-Sub output (amount) | 0 | 0 |
| DVI connector | | |
| DVI output (amount) | 2 | 2 |
| HDMI output | | |
| DisplayPort connector | | |
| Number of DisplayPort connectors | 4 | 4 |
| TV output - Composit | | |
| TV output - S-Video | | |
| Video input - Composit | | |
| Video input - S-Video | | |
| Component output | | |
| nVidia SLI compatible | | |
| AMD Crossfire compatible | | |
| HDCP compatible | | |
| Audio through HDMI | | |
| Included | ||
| DVI -> D-Sub convertor | | |
| DVI -> HDMI plug | | |
| HDMI -> DVI plug | | |
| Remote control | | |
