MSI GTX 275 Lightning Shatters World Records on LN2

Overclocking/OC-Team.be by massman @ 2009-12-21

Once in a while, a high-end video card lands on my test table; in most cases just to overclock on air cooling without even the most simple voltage modifications. This time however we put the card under LN2 and found out this is a golden sample within the Lightning series. Is it the fastest running NVIDIA GPU ever?

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Introduction

Introduction

Madshrimps (c)


The story to this overclocking session is in fact a very amusing one as I wasn't intended to break any world record with the card. When the sane review was posted on the front page, MSI called and asked where the LN2 overclocking results were as the Lightning series are designed to be used for extreme overclocking. Although the card was going to be tested on LN2 somewhere this month, having a vendor request LN2 tests is something extraordinary, especially for reviewing websites. So, instead of postponing the session, my colleague Leeghoofd and I decided to do it last Friday.

As agreed, the card landed on my desk a few days early to prepare it for the LN2 session. As we could use software to increase the voltage of the GPU, I only performed the voltage modification for the memory, which you can find on the next page. Afterwards insulating the card was all I had left to do.

The day of the overclocking session, we first did a couple of runs for the HWBOT Country Cup. For those who don't know this competition, it's a country-based challenge hosted by overclocking database HWBOT. Basically, spread over 7 weeks, there are 7 stages, each of which having different hardware limitations (hw you can use to post score) and is using a different benchmark. An average score determines the ranking of the countries and whatever country has the most points in the end, wins the competition. It's a fairly simple concept but quite cool to participate in as it motivates you to ask other countrymen to participate in the competition. This Friday we tried to come up with scores for Stage 7, which is 3DMark01. Afterwards, we were going to do the GTX 275 test session.

After dismantling the Core 2 Duo setup for 3DMark01, my colleague suggested to offer his Core i7 950 to be used in combination with the GTX275 in order to maximize the scores. In fact, he had to insist on using this processor as I was going to settle for a lower performing LGA1156-based platform. In any case, I'm quite happy he did insist, because this is what we scored when completing our second full run of Vantage:

Massmans 3DMark Vantage - Performance benchmark score


1210MHz on the core and 1400MHz on the memory are already impressive achievements. However, note that in the end, these were my “safety” clocks.
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Comment from piotke @ 2009/12/21
Very nice results.
Comment from jmke @ 2009/12/21
nice is an understatement. This picture sums up the awesomeness the best:



stock 650Mhz
Comment from Massman @ 2009/12/21
Cool. So it is 100% oc?
Comment from jmke @ 2009/12/21
depends on how you look at it; NVIDIA "reference" dictates 650Mhz GPU; MSI version comes with pre-OC at 700Mhz. So "stock" it's not quite 100% OC, but compared to reference, it surpasses 100% OC; which is quite rare for VGA cards. Mostly only a few low end cards achieve this (7300 GT, 2400 XT etc), almost never higher end. (edit: had to add almost)
Comment from Massman @ 2009/12/21
If I can run 1400/1435 again in combination with a 5.1GHz cpu ... 21k should be possible!
Comment from leeghoofd @ 2009/12/21
time to order that UD7 mobo for a review
Comment from geoffrey @ 2009/12/21
Out of the box overclocking aint THAT great though considering it comes with voltage mods and an aftermarket cooler.
Comment from Massman @ 2009/12/21
MSI actually also confirms this: on air cooling it's not an insane card, but it has been built for extreme overclocking.
Comment from geoffrey @ 2009/12/21
Hence it is more an collectors item then anything else
Comment from Massman @ 2009/12/21
It's not really a collectors item as it's actually wide-spread being sold in retail stores. The Asus MARS was a collectors item ... the Lightning series is for the enthousiasts
Comment from jmke @ 2009/12/21
what G means is that's OC potential is not worth it, if it only does it for very short time on extreme cooling
Comment from Massman @ 2009/12/21
OC potential is hardly ever worth it
Comment from jmke @ 2009/12/22
Au contraire, plenty of products from the past were OC worthy on air, surpassing more expensive editions
Comment from Massman @ 2009/12/22
... on high-end products.

I've yet to see any factory-overclocked high-end card that gives any real advantage. In low-end segment, of course there's an advantage in overclocking ... probably because low-end is just crippled high-end.
Comment from jmke @ 2009/12/22
we're basically saying the same thing
Comment from Massman @ 2009/12/22
Yes, I am agreeing
Comment from jmke @ 2009/12/22
we should print this thread out and put it in a frame, this kind of thing doesn't occur very often

 

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