MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 3072 MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Ah... Where to start? First off if you don't already know and haven't heard of this monster of a card it isn't like any other ordinary 3GB GTX 580..

MSI has really done an amazing job on this card and the cooling solution they have chosen to go with. You've got the TwinFrozr cooling but with a little bit of excitement in it. You've got 2 huge blue fans on the front, that not only cool your card but at the same time when you first turn on your PC the fans will spin backwards for 45 seconds and remove all the dust and gunk from your card! Also, if your not one to monitor your temps while gaming and such, that's okay, they kept you guys in mind as well! The thermal monitor that comes with this bad boy actually turns the fans white, yes, I said white. Once your GPU reaches a certain temperature your fans will turn from blue to white! But don't worry, they will go back to blue.

Enough about appearance and all the pretty colors. Now, lets get on the subject of raw performance and the overclocking potential..

When you first receive your Lightning Xtreme, you won't receive it at stock clocks. A factory overclock has already been applied (1025v / 832 / 1664 / 2100) is what you get out of the box, and boy does it run cool! I have mine stuffed inside my 650D and even in a case that a total of FOUR fans, it'll idle at 36* and never break 65*. That's nice and chilly even in my case, imagine if you have a case better made for air cooling setups!

Now when you start overclocking this card you'll start to notice that you don't really have to start raising the voltage until you hit about 900 core, some have even reported that they didn't even touch the voltage till they hit 925 core, that's not only awesome, but on air as well. They highest clock I've been able to achieve with this card is ( 1113v / 955 / 1910 / 2400) and yielded some nice FPS increase from 832 / 1664 / 2100. Now one thing to keep in mind, this card isn't meant to be water cooled, if anything AIR and LN2. To my understanding Koolance was said to be making a block for this card around 3-4 months ago, but no one has really seen or heard anymore about it to my knowledge. However some have said that you can use a block, just not a full-cover block. Maybe a Kuhler mod? Anyone?

Single card/GPU solution you've got it. Now everyone says that this card is overkill for 1080p because 3GB is not needed for 1080p. I can max out ever major title with ease, still use more than 1.5GB vram and not have to worry about temperatures, running out of vram or forking out more cash for another card and a new power supply.

To wrap everything up here I'll just say this.

If you have the money in your budget, or the money at all, I would recommend this card to any serious gamer looking for a single GPU solution to game at about roughly any resolution. This card is cool, quiet, and never get's hot even in my 650D which stays pretty warm considering I only have 4 fans, and 2 of the are on my radiator. The overclocking potential you get is astonishing and can even help you getting into the LN2 benching because this card is ready for negative temperatures whenever you are. 3GB of vram so you don't have to worry about running out, and even if you don't want to overclock it yourself, it's already done for you! Power draw isn't as bad as you'd think either, I ran this card on a 600w GS600 from Corsair and it handled my 4.8Ghz 2600k, and that hefty 950 core clock on my GPU not problems.

So if the money is there, and your in the market for a nice, cool, quiet, single card solution the MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme 3GB is definitely the first in my book. Not to mention if you feel like you need more horsepower, for multiple monitors, 120Hz setups, or just moar frames, these things destroy everything in SLI, and there's no doubt you won't need to upgrade for quite a while!

Thanks for reading guys! if you've got something to add and or would like to say, please comment and express your opinions and thoughts!

Test Bench:
980x @ 4.2GHz
Asus Rampage 3 Extreme
6GB G.Skill Ripjaws @ 2000
Crucial M4 64G x2
1050w Corsair PSU
290.53 Driver

Futuremark Vantage:
832/2100


957/2325


Futuremark 2011:



Metro 2033:



Battlefield 3:





Crysis 2:








I will continue to add new benchmarks and tests to this review. It seems right now that NGTX580 Xtreme and the new 7970's still par to each other and if you got these two babies then there really is no need to upgrade because these do just fine. Now in benchmarks, we are getting lower 3D11 and Vantage cores, but keep in mind my CPU is not overclocked as high as some of the other reviewers and I am benching for the regular consumers like us which we probably will never use LN2 or anything like that anyway.

Okay. A few months back I upgraded to SLI 570's from a single XFX 5870. I was stunned. But, after about a week of playing, I had learned what exactly VRAM limitations were. If I spent the money I did on those cards, I wanted to be damn sure there wasn't a game out that could trump me on max settings. Well, the memory usage during BF3 was 100 percent and it would cause pretty poor stuttering in game. I got to researching other users VRAM usage and saw that guys with 3gb cards were routinely hitting 2gb of memory usage so I knew I didn't have enough to play at the settings I wanted to. I came a across a deal on 2 580 lightning xtremes and snagged them and brought my 570's back to where I bought them for a refund, so no loss there.

Now, I use a 750w power supply and I was pretty nervous and getting a lot of mixed oppinions from people on whether or not it would be enough to power these beasts. A lot of people either said, your completely fine, or no way in hell you need at least 1000w, especially to overclock. The day before I recieved the cards, I went out and got a kill-a-watt wattage meter and took readings at the socket on the 570's to kind of gauge where the 580's would be at. They came in at around 550w MAX stress (unigine maxed with occt linpak). At idle the system used around 135w. Now, the next day I did the same after putting the 580s in. Idle is only around 5w more. In bf3 ultra they peak around 600w. In 3DM11 on a 60m.v. overclock at 915mhz, they FINALLY breached 700w. Thats really as far as Im going to take them until I go with a more powerful psu in the future, as well as cut a new fan into the window of my 800d.

Now, temps. The 800d isnt exactly the best air cooling case. With the case in the corner I usually keep it in, it would hit about 75 degrees at stock clocks during usage/benching. Overclocked to the 915, it would hit around 85 or higher. When I move it out and open the side panel up, and give it proper airflow, it doesn't peak 70 even with extra voltage. So I wont knock the cooling just because I don't have proper airflow. I wont post them all here, but I have all my benches showing progression in overclocks in my profile, so check them out there. But Ill sum it up:

3dm11 with stock 570's: p10550 (10817 graphics score)
3dm11 stock: p12186 (13112 graphics score)
3dm11 885 core o.c.: p12586 (13808 graphics score)
3dm11 915 core o.c.: p12840 (14241 graphics score)

3dm vantage stock 570's: 43110 (38214 gpu)
3dm vantage stock: 50451 (44990 gpu score)
3dm vantage 915 overclock: 51832 (46464 gpu)

Unigine heaven on a 5870: 940
Unigine heaven on SLI 570's: 2060
Unigine heaven on SLI 580's stock clocks: 2600
Unigine on 580's at 915 core: 2749

So you can see some pretty good gains there. Again, the wattage was WAYYYY below what I expected and was told to expect. On overclocks of 60mv it FINALLY started to get to the higher part of what I would safely run on this PSU. All in all, this card is worth it, I dont regret, and it will compete with cards for some time come. If you have any specific questions on whatever I missed, PM me any time.