MSI R5870 Lightning Review

I think I have tested almost every HD5870 card on the market in the last six months and the MSI R5870 is without a doubt my favourite. I even prefer it when compared to the excellent XFX HD5870 Black Edition and the HIS HD5870 Icooler V Turbo which we reviewed a while ago.

I don't fall for marketing gimmicks and before I used the MSI R5870 I was sceptical about all the buzz words they have been using in their advertising campaigns. I am big enough and ugly enough to hold up my hand and admit I was totally wrong. The VRM phase design, voltage monitor points, TwinFrz II Cooler, Active phase switching all combine to create the most potent HD5870 card on the market.

While overclocking is always going to vary from card to card, we were stunned to achieve over 1ghz on the core and a 5860mhz effective clock on the memory. I have never achieved anything close to this on air with a HD5870 before.

So with all this attention to detail and custom PCB design we were expecting to pay about a £40 premium, this seemed reasonable and is what we are used to with other manufacturers ‘special editions'. Heading online we found it for £370 inc vat, which is only £20 more than a reference design.

Everything considered, if money was no object and I was buying a graphics card myself, this would be right at the top of the list. In our manual ‘enhanced' overclocked state, performance was right up there with a GTX480 and the card was running cooler, and quieter than the nVidia solution. MSI also offer a two year warranty with the R5870 Lightning.

KitGuru says: Goodness gracious, great balls of lightning.

Discuss in our forums over here or just leave a quick comment below

Become a Patron!