MSI R7970 Lightning Boost Edition review: fastest HD 7970 yet

It's too bad that the Boost Edition doesn't overclock better than last year’s Lightning with its standard cooler despite the different chip. The limit is again 1240 MHz for the GPU and 1780 MHz for the memory. ASUS proved with the Matrix HD7970 Platinum that a more heavy-duty cooler and a few other tricks can take it further. If you plan on overclocking with just the standard cooler, then that Matrix HD7970 Platinum is a better choice in our opinion, and both cards cost about the same.