For those rare times when you're feeling like taking a dip into a LN2 pot, this is possibly the best card for you.
Liquid nitrogen overclockers are few and far between, but they're very likely to all agree: the N480GTX Lightning is going to give a better chance at high clocks than a standard reference GTX480.
The reasoning behind this pretty simply boils down to componentry - while the reference board uses plenty of solid caps and a power delivery system that works fine at stock, it's not exactly the most capable when pushed far beyond its stock tolerances (and fair enough, too).
Engineers at MSI saw that as a challenge that needed to be taken, which has resulted in a Lightning version of the current top-end NVIDIA card - and it's as close to a GTX580 as you can get for the time being.
In fact the core clockspeed is only 25MHz off the rumoured speeds of the GTX580, and sits at 750MHz, and the memory clock lies 100MHz higher than the reference design, too. MSI have also cleverly wedged extra display options into the N480GTX, ofering an extra DisplayPort alongisde a fullsize HDMI and two DVI.
The Lightning also uses the latest version of the Frozr heatsink, now in its third generation. And yes, it still sounds ridiculous. But it also seems very capable of cooling, too.
Other improvements to the card come from voltage measurement points for GPU and memory, as well as built-in overvoltage switches. It's got a 16-phase PWM to fuel the GF100 core even when overclocked far above specification - and with cards regularly being pushed to 1000MHz core clocks, it's definitely a nice option to have.
We're intending to give the N480GTX Lightning a full workout in the magazine, which will have to really impress to be worth its inevitably huge cost, so jump into our gallery of photos to see this crazy card in more detail.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012