The GTS 450 might be getting most of the press these days, but that doesn't mean everyone has forgotten about the rest of the Fermi-family. MSI has been holding an overclocking tournament in Taipei over the past few days, and took the opportunity to show off its latest beast of a graphics-card - the GTX 480 Lightning.
While the company still hasn't announced the finer details of the card, those on hand managed to get the full scoop. Apparently the GPU will run at 750MHz, meaning that the 480 shaders will tick over at 1,500MHz. The 1.5GB GDDR5 also gets a boost, up to 4,000MHz effective. Obviously these aren't monstrous overclocks, but pushing the limits out of the gate isn't what the company's top-of-the-line cards are all about.
What makes the Lightning-series special are the features included to allow tuners to increase the frequencies on their own. This card has been equipped with a custom cooler and two 90mm fans, heavily redesigned power-circuitry, high-grade components and more voltage-check points than you can shake a multimeter at.
Rather than the standard six-phase PWM-design found on stock-cards, this model gets a 16-phase design with a dedicated power-supply for the memory. While this should enable rock-solid stability and (apparently) up to 34 per cent more voltage than a standard GTX 480, the power-draw will probably be pretty stratospheric. The Lightning requires two eight-pin PCIe power connectors for the core and an additional six-pin connector for the memory - that's the same as the dual-GPU ASUS ROG Ares.
We're sure MSI will send out official details soon, but until then, the only pricing information we have is an estimated MSRP of $550, or around £429 including VAT.
