MSI Geforce N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition

 

              MSI N580GTX Lightning Extreme Edition is a reconstructed N580GTX Lightning but with 3GB DDR5 memory and redesigned Twin FrozrIII cooler (propeller blade fan’s color changes from blue to white if the card gets hot and the fan rotates backwards for 30 seconds each time the computer starts to remove dusts on the fan). The card still has the enhanced voltage controls and power circuitry where the Lightning series stands out. Compared from a regular 580GTX power phase, the EX has 16+1 (12 for the GPU Core, 3 for the memory and 1 for the PLL/VDDC Power).

 The box:

FRONT

BACK

MSI N480GTX Lightning Edition Twin Frozr III (NVIDIA GTX 480)

The card and its very huge packaging box.

          Today's technology where rapidly changing so fast and almost every week there's a lot of new hardware release especially in computer industry.Few days ago I purchased this monster card(MSI GTX 480 Lightning Edition) as a replacement on my previous graphic card (ASUS GTX 460 Direct Cu 1Gb DDR5). I can say that MSI built well because every component of this card where all military class type (MSI trade mark for high end components on motherboards and video cards).  This graphic card composed of dual BIOS, DIP switches and has three voltage measurement socket which later I'll show you. Ill try to run several games like Need for Speed Shift 2, NBA 2K11, Lost Planet 2,Starcraft II and Crysis 2 whereas this games run smoothly on maximum settings with 16X AA. 

         One more thing I'll like on this card was its  power management. We know the GTX 480 consumes a lot of power but MSI built a very good power profile whereas the clocks of memory and GPU automatically adjust as low as 50Mhz on GPU and 75Mhz on memory( nice work MSI).

Additional actual photo of MSI N480GTX Lightning Ed:

This card measures approx 11 inches long.

Asus GTX 460 Top 1Gb DirectCu overclocked Edition

           Recently, I bought this card as a replacement on my old Powercolor ATI Radeon 4870 512mb DDR5 PCS Cooling Edition.Im just wondering the difference between DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 on todays latest games like Dirt2, Metro 2033 , Lost planet 2 and etc. Also the cooling system on this card really amazed me because it uses HDT technology which directly contact on GPU core for better absorption of heat.

Some introduction and specification of the card: (based from overclock3d.com)

             

            Less than a fortnight ago we tested nVidia's latest midrange performance offering; the GeForce GTX 460. The product in question was of reference design, sporting its default clock frequencies and cooler. However it became clear that a number of Add In Board partners had developed their own versions of the graphics card. We are fully aware that many of you readers are less fond of the trusty but more basic reference designs so today we're going to test something with all of the bells and whistles attached. This is the Asus GeForce GTX 460 1GB graphics card.There are a number of things to pay attention with this particular graphics card. As the Asus GTX 460 is of the 1GB variety, it sports a wider 256bit memory interface and 32 ROPS as opposed to the 768MB's 192bit and 24 ROPS. The differences that I've mentioned apply to any 1GB graphics card, however the Asus GTX 460 boasts from three additional features. First of all, the DirectCu TOP edition boasts a 100MHz increase in Core Frequency, a 200MHz increase in Shader Frequency and a 400MHz increase in Memory Frequency. Moreover, it might be possible to push this particular variant as it allows the user to manipulate its core Voltage. As far as cooling a heavily overclocked graphics card is concerned, Asus were kind enough to implement an all new cooling system.

Manufacturer	nVidia	Asus	nVidia
Model	GeForce GTX 460	GeForce GTX 460 DirectCu	GeForce GTX 465
Stream Processors	336	336	352
Memory	768MB	1024MB	1024MB
Memory Interface	192bit	256bit	256bit
ROPS	24	32	32
Core Frequency	675MHz	775MHz	606MHz
Shader Frequency	1350MHz	1550MHz	1215MHz
Memory Frequency	3600MHz	4000MHz	3206MHz
RRP	£150	£195	£220

The Packaging and accesories (From overclock3d.com)
 Asus certainly don't believe in the conservation of trees as the DirectCu arrived in a rather elaborate set of packaging. Aside the use of Asus' recent white and green livery, it is also both wide and deep. I say...what lurks inside..?