Conclusive Thoughts

It's that time again, verdict time. To recommend this Nvidia powered card is pretty hard. By all means this is not MSI's fault at all. MSI put together brilliant package with this Lightning variant again: a solid overclock out of the box, decent aftermarket cooling that can handle the heat output and yet be quieter than the reference one. Double the amount of ram is available for all your high resolution gaming needs. To sum it up : a very complete package bundled with a nice soft overclocking tool.
The main drawback of it all, is that the Nvidia GTX 275 retails, in my honest opinion, a fair bit too high. When AMD launched its 58XX series the 275 and 285 cards performance numbers became pretty obsolete. On top of that, the AMD cards are retailing in the shops at very competitive prices.( due to shortage prices are rapidly increasing ) I was under the impression, that Nvidia cards in general would drop drastically in price as

a) they couldn't compete performance wise with the new AMD monster cards
b) they still lacked support of DirectX11.

Only way to remain competitive is to drop the prices. But it seemed stock dried out rapidly. Ordering cards of the 275 and 285 series is almost impossible to do. The demand still is good, yet stock is low, so Nvidia keeps the prices at their current level. An AMD 5850 retails around 260 euro's, its bigger brother the 5870 at 360 euro's. (same note prices are rising) Their performance is top of the bill. How can you recommend a GTX 275 card, which retails at the exact same price as the little 58 series AMD card to a customer ? The story get's even worse for the GTX 285 series.



So where does this leave the MSI GTX 275 Lightning? It's a solid performer, deviating on certain spots from the reference design; it's build to handle some serious gaming and overclocking. It's got very potent, but quiet cooling. However the MSI card retails at the same price level as other 1792Mb GTX 275 cards. If I had my eye set on one of these Nvidia cards, it for sure would be this MSI card. eg Folders are still in favour of the Nvidia series, these cards can pump out some serious points. One of the few fields were AMD is still slacking.


Click to Zoom
Look at them clocks man, no added voltages at all , just an up in the fan speed, a folders dream

MSI Geforce GTX 275 Lightning


Pros
+ Nicely engineered ultra durable graphics card, really build to last.
+ High overclocks warranted out of the box, one of the fastest clocks for GTX 275 GPU's.
+ Twin Frozr II : Very good and quiet cooling solution.
+ For the overclockers : MSI Afterburner and good PWM design warrants hours/years of fun.

Contras
- pretty pricey: retailing at 255 euro's, there are faster cards out there.
- due to limited availability might become a collector's item.

I would like to thank Janneke from MSI for letting us test their latest card.