Ride the Lightning - MSI R5870 Lightning

Lightning Strikes Again

The Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X might be our best Radeon HD 5870 graphics card so far, but that position is now under threat from MSI. 

Much like the SAS of the United Kingdom and the Rangers of the United States of America, the Lightning series of graphics cards represent MSI's very best. Typically, cards which fall into the Lightning category make use of a plethora of high-end, military-class components including highly conductive capacitors, solid state chokes, and multiple-phase PWM (pulse-width modulation) controller, to help it achieve above average levels of performance.

And this philosophy can be seen in MSI's latest Lightning graphics card – the R5870 Lightning. On paper, the card retains the same 1600 stream processor Cypress XT core, which is now running at slightly higher clock speeds.

To be precise, the core is now clocked at 900MHz, which represents a mild but significant 50MHz bump. Then again, this is a Lightning card, and the kind of people who buy cards like this usually don't leave their cards bone-stock. So it is a good thing that the MSI R5870 Lightning comes with the abovementioned sorts of niceties that'll aid users/gamers in the overclocking process.

Speaking of overclocking, the R5870 Lightning comes bundled with MSI's popular Afterburner overclocking software. Developed with RivaTuner, the Afterburner software allows users to easily overclock their graphics card's core and memory clock speeds. But more importantly, cards fully supported by Afterburner can also have their core voltages tweaked. This is essential to achieving higher clock speeds.

So far so good, the new MSI R5870 Lightning seems to have all bases covered. Let's take a closer look at the card itself on the next page while you can keep an eye on the full specs list of the card on the specs tab. 

The MSI R5870 Lightning

 Let's begin our description of the MSI R5870 Lightning with the cooler. The card employs a Twin Frozr II cooler, which is an improved version of the first edition Twin Frozr cooler, which we reviewed in May last year. The cooler features two 80mm large fans sitting on top of what seems to be solidly-designed heatsink, and also quad 8mm thick SuperPipe heat pipes, which are supposedly the thickest in the market.

If you ask us, we think the original Twin Frozr looked better. We liked its clean surgical looks, and the blocky cooler cover also makes it look more solidly constructed. This second generation Twin Frozr II cooler somehow looks more flimsy, but that's just us. Despite that, we are happy to report that new cooler is quiet at load, and never once sounded overtaxed even if the GPU is at full load.

Anyhow, to complement this massive cooler, the R5870 Lightning also features a comprehensive power deliver system to help ensure the GPU is never starved of power; how's a whopping 15-phase PWM design sound to you? In addition to that, APS (Active Phase Switching) a power-saving technology that adjusts PWM's phase mode based on GPU/memory load is deployed to help increase power efficiency. Also used are Tantalum core Hi-C capacitors for better stability at high temperatures and ultra long lifespan aluminum solid capacitors. All this means that the card can overclock to a greater extent and can do so more safely and with greater stability. And according to MSI, and we quote, reaching 1GHz at the core is "a piece of cake".

On the subject of clock speeds, in stock form, the R5870 Lightning is running 900MHz at the core (as we have mentioned) and 4800MHz DDR clock speed at the memory. This means core clock speeds have been given a 50MHz bump, whereas memory clock speeds have remained unchanged.

Test Setup

The graphics cards were tested using our Vista system which has the following specifications:

Windows Vista SP1 Test System:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
• Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard
• 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
• Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1

We will be testing the MSI R5870 Lightning using the latest Catalyst 10.2 driver package, which ATI says will yield significant improvements over previous driver packages. We will be comparing it against both the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X (870MHz at the core, 5000MHz DDR) as well as a bone stock ATI Radeon HD 5870. Note that because the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X has already been returned to the manufacturer, results obtained was with Catalyst 9.10, which is about three revisions old. Nevertheless, it'll be intriguing to see how the Twin Frozr II cooler matches up against the special VCT cooler on the Sapphire card. For comparison, we have also lined up results from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285.

The full list of cards and their driver versions used:

• MSI R5870 Lightning 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.2)
• Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.10)
• ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.2)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB GDDR3 (ForceWare 196.21)

The cards were tested using the following benchmarks:

• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
• Crysis Warhead
• Far Cry 2
• Warhammer: Dawn of War 2

3DMark Vantage Results

Predictably, the MSI R5870 Lightning was the top performer on Vantage, but its scores were only about 1-3% higher than that of a stock Radeon HD 5870. The Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X, which is running on older Catalyst 9.10 driver pack, could not even outperform a stock Radeon HD 5870, which shows just how much the tremendous improvements the latest driver package from ATI can give. Still, this is just a synthetic benchmark, and it'll be interesting to see if things continue to remain this way.

Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2 Results

On Crysis Warhead, the 50MHz bump on the MSI R5870 Lightning gave it a minor lead over a stock Radeon HD 5870. Against the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X, there was nary a difference.

Far Cry 2 served up the some surprises. While the MSI R5870 Lightning was faster than a stock Radeon HD 5870, both cards (Catalyst 10.2) were slightly slower than the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X (Catalyst 9.10). But it has to be said that the difference is negligible. 

Dawn of War 2 Results

On Dawn of War 2, it was evident that the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X was the quickest, but the margin really isn't that great. The MSI R5870 Lightning continued to outperform the reference Radeon HD 5870, and we wouldn't expect anything less.

Temperature

We knew the Twin Frozr II cooler would be effective, but we never expected the MSI R5870 Lightning to record only a mere 62 degrees Celsius at load. This is certainly impressive considering a stock Radeon HD 5870 runs at a much higher 78 degrees Celsius. The MSI card also managed to pip the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X.

Power Consumption

Power consumption figures were significantly higher than that of a stock Radeon HD 5870. But then again, we were powering the card with two 8-pin connectors, so that might explain the slightly higher readings.

Overclocking

The MSI R5870 Lightning is positioned as the card for extreme overclockers, and while we didn't bring out our LN2 canisters, we managed to get a respectable 1000MHz at the core and 5000MHz DDR using nothing more than just MSI's Afterburner overclocking utility and pumping up the voltage values a tad to 1.25V (default was 1.162V). The resultant score on the Extreme preset of 3DMark Vantage was 9765 – an improvement of 8%.

Hidden Potential

Overall, we are pleased with the MSI R5870 Lightning's performance as it performed up to our expectations. And although it was lagging behind the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X at some of the benchmarks, the difference is negligible and could be because of the difference in driver packages used.

Performance aside, we were impressed with the efficiency of the Twin Frozr II cooler. An operating temperature of 62 degrees Celsius is a massive improvement over the stock cooler's 78 degrees Celsius. This would go a long way in helping overclocking fanatics to obtain better results.

Speaking of overclocking, we have also shown that the card is quite an eager overclocker. With just default air-cooling and the bumping up of core voltages, we were able to attain the magical 1000MHz clock speed at the core. Memory clock speeds didn't fare too well as we were limited to only 5000MHz DDR. Nevertheless, that gave us a decent increase in performance. 

Having said that, we suspect that the audience this card is targeted at won't stop at mere air-cooling. And with the proper cooling tools, we believe the card has more to offer.

To end our review, the card has a recommended retail price of around US$435 (S$614), but once you factor in vendor overheads here, it should end up costing around the same as the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X, which currently retails for S$689. Nevertheless, if we had to pick, we'll still go with the MSI R5870 Lightning if only because of its high-end features and great overclocking capability with more untapped potential.

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