Computex 2009: Hardware Preview

MSI GTX 260 Lightening graphics card

Like Gigabyte, in an attempt to leverage some unique selling point in a currently rather stagnant graphics market, MSI has redesigned the GeForce GTX 260 here and a little later, the GTX 275 as well, in the form of its new Lightening brand. We first saw a mock up at CeBIT this year, however now MSI has a working sample ready to ship.

The bundle is certainly considerable – the box alone is enough to take on the Sapphire Atomic briefcase in awesomeness. The Lightening card uses an MSI dual fan cooler with heatpipes from the core (although the memory is not specifically cooled). While idling we’d have to say it was still surprisingly audible - maybe we’ve been spoiled to date or the drivers for the card weren’t installed, but we’d have expected silence when the card's doing nothing and sitting in the open air – we’ll be sure to check this in the full review.

MSI includes three outputs – VGA, DVI and HDMI, although only two can be used together at any one time. We’ve already covered the PCB enhancements in our news post – the updated chokes solved problems all round and now prevent a PSU from squealing. The power phases have been beefed up from six to ten to aid overclocking. In addition the memory has been beefed up to 1,792MB (up from 896MB), and there are even voltage check points on the back of the PCB allowing multimeters to assess vDroop.


In addition to this, the AirForce 5.25in front panel tool is also included. This connects via an internal USB pin-out and features a touch sensitive aluminium front panel that allows overclocking and over-volting on the fly, as well as a range of preset options.

Around the edge are controls to access six different setting modes – Office turns all the key settings right down, although leaves enough power for Aero to work and for web browsing, while Power Saving dials it down even further: MSI described this mode is good if the PC is left on to download or defrag for example, and doesn’t need the graphics at all.

Theatre mode allows adjustment of the light/darkness and contrast via two of the LED backlit sliders but apologies, because I forgot to ask how Lightening differed from Game mode. Game mode allows customisable settings from the five touch sensitive sliders that allow core and memory voltage changes, as well as core, memory and shader overclocking too. There are no actual buttons and simply tapping the words is enough to enable the selection, however no matter how much I tried with my pudgy Western digits the AirForce resisted entirely. It took the finesse of delicate Asian ladies fingers to show me up and get it to work first time (thank-you, Lavender and Leona!) Trying again with my little pinkie, it worked fine, but I try not to think what frustrated gamers with greasy pizza covered fingers might do to it!

The cost will be considerable compared to current GTX 260s, especially since prices have been dropping through the floor recently, however with nothing new on the horizon the extra overclocking potential combined with the AirForce could be a good idea.