The Lightning has a Twin Frozr cooler and pre-overclocked GPU, 900MHz instead of 850Mhz.

The F22 Raptor on the retail box symbolizes the lightning speed. The card itself, a solid piece of engineering, has Hi-C capacitators, "buzz free" ferrit chokes and a shiny heatsink with 4 enormous heatpipes and 2 fans. This card's printed circuit board is somewhat bigger than the normal size, this could be a problem with a small case or mainboard parts 'getting in the way'.

Conclusion:

Firstly the performance is very good but not as good as as the XFX 5870 XT. Thanks to the 50MHz extra core speed, the Lightning is unquestionably better than a stock reference card. A problem however is the price, round and about 10% higher than the XFX 5870 xxx.

Overclocking:

The reviewers had high expectations because of the 2x 8-pin power connectors, Pure Iron Core chokes and Aluminum Core Solid Capacitors. After raising the GPU voltage a bit they got a very stable Core Clock @1034MHz, and the memory reached 1351MHz. The MSI Afterburner was used for the voltage and clock speeds.

Temperatures:

MSI Kombustor was used for stability and temperature tests. The GPU stayed well under sixty degrees Celsius with Kombustor. After OCing this card the Temperature rose to seventyty degrees Celsius, which can be considered an acceptable level.

Noise:

Allthough advertised as such the Lightning is not completely squeal free, but on the other hand it's an enormous improvement when compared to the reference card.

Compared To:

ATI HD 5870 reference, XFX Radeon HD 5770 XT and its own OC results.

Benchmarks:

3D Mark Vantage, Crysis Warhead, COD Modern Warefare, Dirt 2, Need For Speed Shift, Furmark loading.