 Buy an unlocked Intel 4th Gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of Rome 2 Total War. Click now to learn more. It's lightning time again folks. MSI has their regular cards, then their gaming cards, both of which are pretty sweet, but they're truly flagship graphics cards are branded lightning. Presumably because they are so flashy looking. Or wait, no, hold on. Probably because they're powerful and lightning is made of electricity and clouds. Wait, hold on. Just electricity? How does even... So the first thing you're going to notice about this graphics card is the weight. Holy balls. It comes in an awesome carrying case style box with a full set of accessories including PCI Express 6 pin to 8 pin adapters and even an alternate backplate for the card. If you decide to swap out the full length one for just a smaller short one. Once the box is open, the next obvious thing is the fact that this is not a reference card. I mean, here is a picture of a reference card for context. It is smaller and punier in every possible way. Because of this, you will need to make sure that your system is capable of containing the greatness of the GTX 780 lightning. Side panel fans could interfere with its increased height and you'll need to make sure that you have enough expansion slots free. Because due to its 2 plus slot cooler, it will take up 1 to 3 PCI slots. Now, because the card is based on the GeForce GTX 780 GPU, there are no real surprises in terms of normal Nvidia graphics card features. You got support for SLI, 3DVision, PhysX, CUDA, G-Sync and of course GeForce Experience which has now added game streaming to compatible devices like Nvidia Shield, low overhead gameplay recording and Twitch live streaming to its ability to optimize your game settings and keep your graphics drivers all up to date and all of that good stuff. But that's not why you were shopping for a lightning. Let's talk about what makes this card special. First up is the fact that this is a very non-referenced PCB. It utilizes components with MSI's military class concept including DRMOS4, copper MOS, Hi-C cabs, new super ferrite chokes and their dark solid capacitors. So unless you've got some electrical engineering under your belt, most of that probably sounded like gibberish. But the point is that even though the MIL standard 810G compliance doesn't really mean much, a lightning card is capable of running faster, cooler and longer than a typical reference card. Second is their triple force architecture. So the lightning logo on the top illuminates green, blue or red depending on the load. Their twin Froser cooler design has been updated to tri-Frozer with three PWM controlled propeller blade fans rather than two. And their power delivery system for the card itself has been decked out with an all digital design. Core, memory and auxiliary voltage are all digital. Next up is the GPU reactor which is basically like an extra PCB strapped to the back of the card to reduce ripple and increase power delivery to the GPU core. In practice, this will be way beyond irrelevant unless you're using exotic cooling methods but hey, it's there. To go along with it, their V checkpoints allow you to easily monitor key card voltages if you're performing mods and want to use a dedicated multimeter rather than software to find out how much juice you're giving to key components on the card, particularly when you're extreme overclocking. Their twin BIOS feature gives you two separate BIOS chips which is good because if you can find your way to get your hands on the non-nerfed LN2 BIOS that allows a power limit over 109% then that might be pretty useful. Now, to be clear guys, we benchmarked our card assuming that end users will have to just deal with the stock BIOS but trust me, there is more potential in this card if you're willing to get a little bit crazy and that dual BIOS implementation means that there's an easy bailout switch if something goes wrong during a BIOS flash. Triple over voltage, that is cranking up the volts to the GPU memory and PLL, is all handled separately because of that feature and it is fully supported by Nanosci's afterburner software but again, it will have limited relevance unless you perform the BIOS flash that I was talking about a moment ago because that is going to hold back the true raw potential of this graphics card in a very meaningful way. So the conclusion is this, the GTX 780 Lightning is how you say lightning fast. We threw a few games at it from our usual suite of benchmarks and while it doesn't really stand out from the crowd in terms of its performance, just as a reminder guys, all of our cards are overclocked as high as they can go, in my opinion it's really very reasonably priced. For $50 more than a reference 780 running at reference clocks and as little as $20 to $30 more than a normal non-reference card, if nothing else, you're getting better build quality and cooler operation for your graphics card throughout its lifetime. It's also aggressively overclocked out of the box at a full 133 MHz faster max boost clock than a reference GTX 780 and it has no difficulty hitting those numbers consistently while running cooler and still being satisfyingly quiet. My only issue with the 780 Lightning actually has nothing to do with MSI but rather to do with Nvidia. Since it was released, the 780 Lightning has been nerfed with that 109% power limit BIOS that I was talking about before versus the aggressive one that it had available to it at launch. This practice of Nvidia's where non-approved card designs are limited, puts some restraints on their partners ability to deliver the best possible performance and while I understand Nvidia's perspective and I agree that maintaining a brand image of reliability is more important than 3 more FPS in Battlefield in general, I wish that the card partners and end users were allowed to make their own choice and forego warranty coverage if they really want to push things to the limit. I mean I guess the really extreme guys still can if they go and find BIOS mods but I just wish it was a little bit easier. Anyway guys, thanks for watching this review of the MSI GeForce GTX 780 Lightning. Don't forget to like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment and let me know what you think. Would you spend an extra $20 to $50 knowing that your card is going to run cooler and it's going to look better and it's going to last longer or is that not worth it to you? Do you upgrade so often that it doesn't really matter? And then finally guys, as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos.