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MSI R5870 Lightning Review

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. In March 2009, 4A Games announced a partnership with Glukhovsky to collaborate on the game. The game was announced a few months later at the 2009 Games Convention in Leipzig;a first trailer came along with the announcement.

The game is founded around the 4A Engine which features complex artificial intelligence as well as enhanced lighting and environmental algorithms. The game also supports DX11 with Tessellation.

Testing was performed with maximum settings (all enabled including full volumetric texturing and soft particles) as well as triple AAA antialiasing and 16x texture filtering for the ultimate experience. This game is extremely demanding so higher resolutions are possible, however with the reduction of image quality – which the target audience will not be happy with.

The sizeable increase on the core means this game is a lot smoother at our choosen settings when compared with the reference board.

Our worst case scenario run is impressive as the Lightning is showing a significant improvement when compared to the reference edition. Generally performance would be higher throughout, but we select the most stressful locations for our testing.

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44 comments

  1. Good god man, its alive. that is a mental card, it appears to have been out for a while, how come ive never heard about it ! ME WANT!

  2. That is stunning , simply stunning. Sapphire must be worried if MSI keep these up !

  3. that overclock is insane, over 1ghz on the core? bloody hell man.

  4. 1ghz on the core and what the hell on the memory ! I need a silverstone raven 02 for my setup too!

  5. £20 more than a reference design? ill have it. if I could afford it :p

  6. Just ordered one, ill post a picture of my receipt on the forums 🙂

  7. That is one mega mega board. I love all the work they put into the hardware rather than just slapping a crappy cooler on it.

  8. Who the hell needs a GTX480 when you got one of these, or two in Crossfire. If anyone here as two of them in Crossfire, ill be green.

  9. Power drain is quite high but what a card that is. well worth the money.

  10. Wonder if I could get a deal on a Crossfire setup !

  11. ITs a really nice design and normally these cards really dont appeal to me at all.

  12. Bit out of my price league but great review, really enjoyed that one.

  13. seems well priced considering. Ill get one when they drop to 200 quid.

  14. MSI are seriously underrated at times, all the attention goes to Sapphire. some of their motherboards are wicked good.

  15. Love lovely lovely. ill have one 🙂

  16. What a design that is. nice to see other companies doing these apart from asus. its actually quite affordable too, considering.

  17. temps seem good, power consumption is high, but nothing compared to GTX480

  18. would have liked to see some compares with GTX480 🙂

  19. ITs way out of my price range, but if I had money to buy a HD4870 id get this for sure, absolutely !

  20. Great review man, I wonder how many people actually buy these cards. they seem way expensive.

  21. Nice review, cheers. what a great card. shall discuss it with you on the forums

  22. Impressive design from the ground up, dont often see that kind of attention to detail.

  23. Right, ive been looking at all these cards this month and im getting sick of it, having a crappy old GTX250. just ordered this, time to warn the wife.

  24. I still think the sapphire vapor is nicer.

  25. Would like to buy one of these myself, but hey im poor 🙁

  26. how cool is the LED strip on the back of the PCB? wicked man.

  27. how cool is the LED strip on the back of the PCB? wicked man.

  28. Love the cooler, wonder who made that for them? arctic cooling maybe?

  29. Nah its not arctic cooling, they dont make metal coolers like that. maybe MSI internal one.

  30. MSI make coolers? I thought all these companies farmed out jobs like that to specialists.

  31. i love porn movies

    Nah arctic cooling only do that if their name stays on the cooler. this is not them for sure.

  32. I really enjoyed that review. i always like reading about hardware I can’t afford 🙂

  33. power consumption is high, but two 12 pin feeds would explain that. this card is sucking some serious wattage.

  34. It is my dream to play GTA4 at 2560 on a HD5870. I shall have my dream in the next 2 months 🙂

  35. Good temps, for the power intake. Love the board.

  36. nice card indeed. great clocks too. I didnt think it was possible to hit 1ghz on core on air.

  37. MSI FTW with this beast. love the cooler too. like the pictures, turned otu well.

  38. very interesting indeed. the 8mm heatpipes are certainly good ideas. they are normally 6mm right?

  39. Nvidia really are not making much ground on older tech hardware. HD5870 is still kicking n screaming.

  40. They really should have overclocked this card more out of the box, dont you think?

  41. its very interesting to see the 8mm pipes. those are much thicker than the normal design, id love to know who makes the cooler for MSI. thats not an internal design, specialist job.

  42. wonder what the thermal limit on those cards is? 105c like nvidia GTX480?