Widescreen Gaming Forum

My retailer called me, my card is in! It's the Asus card, I hope I can pick it up tomorrow. Excited! But I hope this is a good card, because I don't want any frying stuff :p

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Music is my life. You are my music.

I think the new cards may be in the retail channel now as reviews at newegg are starting to look more positive.

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Corsair Air 540 | Asus Maximus VIII Formula | Intel 6700K @4.6 GHz | 32GB DDR4 3200
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB | EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified | Creative Sound Blaster Z
Sennheiser HD 598 SE | Zalman Zm-Mic1 | Corsair HX1000i | Dell U3415W | Dell U2715H
Zowie EC1-A | Logitech G15 | Razer Nostromo | Windows 10 Pro x64

I got the card! It's beast, I hope I can reïnstall my windows soon and start writing some first impressions once I have everything set up properly. Will get back to you guys.

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Music is my life. You are my music.

I got the card! It's beast, I hope I can reïnstall my windows soon and start writing some first impressions once I have everything set up properly. Will get back to you guys.

What does the back plate look like is it the solid on or the one with the space cut out for the VRM?

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Corsair Air 540 | Asus Maximus VIII Formula | Intel 6700K @4.6 GHz | 32GB DDR4 3200
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB | EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified | Creative Sound Blaster Z
Sennheiser HD 598 SE | Zalman Zm-Mic1 | Corsair HX1000i | Dell U3415W | Dell U2715H
Zowie EC1-A | Logitech G15 | Razer Nostromo | Windows 10 Pro x64

Gratz Moose hope it all goes well for you!

The MSI has been officially released and exected in retail next week.

http://event.msi.com/vga/lightning/r7970.html

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Exmortis Darkenblade aka "Scott"

These days you can find me:

Vanguard - Exmortis/Falcron/Treager/Goraag/Scrotal/Phailse - Telon Server

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe Gen3/Gskill 4x4 DDR3-1600cl7/i7-2600K/7970 Lightning/24x27x24 eyefinity/Corsair K90/Corsair AX850/Revo3 240/ocz Vertex 3 240/WD VelociRapter 600/Corsair 600T/Logitech 5450Z 5.1

The priest asked "Who are you?"

And the voice replied "Legion for we are many."

First MSI review

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1444/pg1/msi-r7970-lightning-enthusiast-overclocked-graphics-card-review-introduction.html

_________________
Exmortis Darkenblade aka "Scott"

These days you can find me:

Vanguard - Exmortis/Falcron/Treager/Goraag/Scrotal/Phailse - Telon Server

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe Gen3/Gskill 4x4 DDR3-1600cl7/i7-2600K/7970 Lightning/24x27x24 eyefinity/Corsair K90/Corsair AX850/Revo3 240/ocz Vertex 3 240/WD VelociRapter 600/Corsair 600T/Logitech 5450Z 5.1

The priest asked "Who are you?"

And the voice replied "Legion for we are many."

Is there anyone else who has an Asus or soon an MSI card? If you do, please let me know. I'll post some more images soon.

Also, the card indeed has a backplate, it feels very well built and decent.

_________________
Music is my life. You are my music.

Cards are back in stock at the egg. Not sure if I should wait for the MSI Lightning or pull the trigger on this?

_________________
Corsair Air 540 | Asus Maximus VIII Formula | Intel 6700K @4.6 GHz | 32GB DDR4 3200
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB | EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified | Creative Sound Blaster Z
Sennheiser HD 598 SE | Zalman Zm-Mic1 | Corsair HX1000i | Dell U3415W | Dell U2715H
Zowie EC1-A | Logitech G15 | Razer Nostromo | Windows 10 Pro x64

That can only be answered by you.

My new Mobo will be the ASUS Z77 Maximus V Formula. I have a OCZ Revo3 for the top x4 slot, and I also have a SB XFi PCIE 1x. If the onboard sound is still a realtek codec I will keep my sound card, thus I could not CFX with a 3 slot card. So because I love options and hate being crippled, I will go with MSI Lightning for 2 slot. Just in case I want to go CFX (even though I have not run CFX since my pair of 3870s, I just must have the option.

I beleive the MSI is a better card, but thats simply my opinion, and no one elses choices should be made soley on one persons belief.

The ASUS CU cards have always been great cards, but there has been an aweful lot of issues crop up on forums, seems there are shims missing and the cooler does not make full and tight contact on the card. ASUS has refused to admit the problem, but newer cards could be fixed, maybe moose can tell us.

Last one for me is I own 2 mDP to DP cables, thus the MSI allows me to leverage these, their not cheap, so only need to buy one longer mDP to DP and I have my eyefinity back all using DP connection (NO MORE TEARING YAY!!).

Either card im sure wopudl be great, im getting ansy too, my eyefinity has been down for a few weeks now, hate looking at those dark monitors.

_________________
Exmortis Darkenblade aka "Scott"

These days you can find me:

Vanguard - Exmortis/Falcron/Treager/Goraag/Scrotal/Phailse - Telon Server

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe Gen3/Gskill 4x4 DDR3-1600cl7/i7-2600K/7970 Lightning/24x27x24 eyefinity/Corsair K90/Corsair AX850/Revo3 240/ocz Vertex 3 240/WD VelociRapter 600/Corsair 600T/Logitech 5450Z 5.1

The priest asked "Who are you?"

And the voice replied "Legion for we are many."

HardOCP has a review of the Lightning up now as well: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/20/msi_r7970_lightning_video_card_review

Looks like the only real problem with the Lightning may be the dome on the back if you intend on running it in a crossfire setup with only double (or would that be single?) spacing between the PCI-E x16 slots, or if you have a sound card in the x1 slot that's most likely above your graphics card.

Also, fuuuuuu, look at that overclocking headroom: http://www.techpowerup.com/162729/MSI-Radeon-HD-7970-Lightning-Overclocked-to-1800-MHz-Core-7.70-GHz-Memory.html

The ASUS is a very nice looking card though.