CES 2011: MSI Demos New AM3+ Big Bang Conqueror & Lightning GPUs

GTX 580 Lightning

Currently, the GTX 580 is the fastest single GPU graphics card on the market and MSI has decided to go ahead and release a Lightning version of it. For those of you not familiar with the Lightning brand, it is supposed to offer highly clocked cards which are also tailored to the needs of overclockers. Extremely high quality components are used including in this case a 14-phase PWM and the cards themselves go through a rigorous quality assurance process before being shipped to the retail channels. Ultimately, usually means cards boasting the Lightning moniker are usually slow coming market but we’re expecting this particular version sooner rather than later.

The newest lightning cards will also feature MSI’s brand new Twin Frozr III heatsink design which incorporates the new fan design which is called Propeller. Slightly beveled leading edges on the fans mean they are able to run at higher speeds than the ones on the Twin Frozr II heatsinks while causing much less noise.




HD 6970 Lightning

Much like the aforementioned GTX 580 Lightning, the HD 6970 version sports most of the same features including the high end 16-phase PWM and voltage read points. The only real difference (other than the GPU which resides within) is the overall PCB length which is substantially shorter on the AMD card.