msi lightning xe 3gb hardocp review

[wheeljack12]

I am glad I am staying away from 3gb cards. Read this review, even a overclocked SLI still can't outdo vanilla 1.5 580's in sli.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...eo_card_review

[Skinner]

Maybe you should start reading again and look at the settings. But til 2560x1600 your're mostly fine though, except for Metro2033.

I'm tempting to get two of these, because I mis the dx10/11 SSAA.

[Roadhog]

looks like for $600 less you can get 6970's that perform nearly the same. lol

The power usage drop on the MSI is pretty fancy though.

[SirPauly]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

looks like for $600 less you can get 6970's that perform nearly the same. lol

The power usage drop on the MSI is pretty fancy though.

I don't understand the humor unless one is an extremist.

IF price savings and surround is important to someone there is GTX 570's with 2.5 gigs of ram.

This review did get a gold rating and is an enthusiast dream product according to Hardocp. I really like HardOcp based on their passion and strong convictions. May not agree with them at times, but certainly appreciate and respect their passion for multi-monitor gaming and their investigations. Personally feel, with Hardocp's investigations and awareness of the limitations of ram with surround gaming helped bring the choices of 3 gig GTX 580's and 2.5 gig GTX 570 sku's to consider.

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by slaWter

The 1.5GB per GPU on the 590s is still the biggest mistake on that product. One of the main features is "Surround with a single card" and the 1.5GB VRAM simply kills that right away.

Or it could be that no one solution is perfect, but the one that comes closest is two 3gb580s.

As far as the 590 goes, look at Dragon Age, they deem it plays fine at 4X AA and not at 8X AA like the 6970 CF. Would I rather have that extra 4X AA in that game, or PhysX and 3D Vision? For me that's a pretty easy choice.

Of course on Dirt3 the 1.5GB GTX580s could run 8X AA while the 6970s could only do 4X, so apparently this isn't uniform either.

On the F1 game it's a difference of 4X AA on the 1.5GB vs 8X AA on the higher ones, but on Battlefield the 1.5GB 580s could do 16X AA while the 6970s could only do 8X.

At Crysis it was 2X AA vs 4X, and at Metro AAA vs 4X.

So the results were all over the board, and in some cases, Dirt3 and Battlefield, the 1.5GB cards were better.

But day in day out you say "The Physx and 3d Vision don't matter, the games it wins don't matter, the only thing that really matters is there are some games where you can get a small increase in IQ by using 8X AA instead of 4X AA!"

All the while forgetting:

In all of our testing though, we did feel that SLI felt smoother to us than CFX at 5760x1200. DiRT 3 was the worse for CFX at this resolution, the performance driving did not feel like the framerate being shown.

that ATi has worse microstutter and multiGPU drivers.

What good is an extra 4X AA if you have to look at the game hitching and stuttering?

[newparad1gm]

Originally Posted by wheeljack12

I am glad I am staying away from 3gb cards. Read this review, even a overclocked SLI still can't outdo vanilla 1.5 580's in sli.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...eo_card_review

What benchmarks are you looking at? The only reason you see the 3GB GTX 580s get lower FPS is because they are using much higher AA settings and such because the 3GB VRAM can handle it. That's how HardOCP does benchmarks, by finding the best settings that are still playable for each setup and benchmarking that. In the Apples-to-Apples comparisons which use the same settings you see the MSI 3GB GTX 580s beat the vanilla 580s every time.

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by slaWter

No, I don't say that.
VRAM or AA isn't every thing. There are lots of other factors. Like the ones you mentioned: PhysX, 3D, microstuttering.
Some of them are the reason why I use nV products. I've tried different Crossfire setups myself. If I would like it, I'd probably still use it.

But fact is, AMD did the right thing by making 2GB the standard/default configuration. 2GB is simply the smarter solution that covers pretty much all market segments expect 3x30".
That's all I'm saying. We shouldn't start another debate on this I think. We know each others point of views on this by now, don't you think?

And btw, there is no need to compare 16x CSAA to 8x MSAA. And does Dragon Age 2 even have GPU PhysX?

Hard to say on the VRAM. STEAM survey shows only 8% of machines have multi monitor, and 25% of them are are possibly 50X10 and up. 57X10 is the only resolution of the 50X10 and up set with enough use to get listed separately, and that's at .63% of total.

So you've got three resolutions that add up to 1.5% of the market at most, and you're saying it's good ATi made their reference design with them in mind.

I agree more is better, but I can also see why a company would make reference designs for 98.5% of their market, and let the OEMs make variants to cater to the needs of the 1.5%.

With the GTX570 outselling the 6950, and the GTX580 more than doubling the sales of the 6970, it looks like NVIDIA is the company that offered the public what they wanted.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

As far as the 1.5% of displays you and I are included in go, with 2GB 460s,560s,560Tis, 2.5GB 570s, and 3GB 580s, we have more choice of 2GB and up cards with NVIDIA products. (so from a business and user perspective, NVIDIA wins, IMHO)

If multi monitor sticks around, I would not be shocked if future reference designs from both companies have 2GB VRAM and up.

On Dragon Age, no, there's no PhysX. I was just saying I'd rather have PhysX and play Dragon Age at 4X AA than play Dragon Age at 8X AA and miss out on PhysX in the 13-14 games I have that use it. (playing Alice now, it makes a big difference in the game)

As far as 16X CSAA vs 8X MSAA goes, in my experience the differences get a lot harder to see at anything above 4X MSAA. I'll still take resolution plus low AA over lower res with high AA any day. (e.g. I'd rather see 25X16 4X than 19X10 8X)

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by Rollo

With the GTX570 outselling the 6950, and the GTX580 more than doubling the sales of the 6970, it looks like NVIDIA is the company that offered the public what they wanted.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

And the 5770 is outselling everything. Looks like ATI is the company that offered the public what they wanted.

[SirPauly]

I was very glad to see these Sku's though:

GTX 580 3 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=

GTX 570 2.5 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=

GTX 560ti 2 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=

GTX 560 2 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=


Even though multi-monitor gaming may not be main-stream it's nice to see choice for the consumer to have more ram for the nVidia platform, and very welcomed to me.

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by slaWter

lol the Steam survey again....

If you have information that shows multimonitor sets are much more prevalent than the Steam survey shows, please post a link.

If I'm wrong, I'll retract.

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by SirPauly

I was very glad to see these Sku's though:

GTX 580 3 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=

GTX 570 2.5 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=

GTX 560ti 2 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=

GTX 560 2 gig:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw=


Even though multi-monitor gaming may not be main-stream it's nice to see choice for the consumer to have more ram for the nVidia platform, and very welcomed to me.

I similarly welcomed the Zotac 3GB GTX580 at $499:

http://www.frys.com/product/6617504

and the 2GB GTX560:

http://www.provantage.com/zotac-zt-5...m~7ZOTC08U.htm

Yea, verily, when you consider these with the Palit, MSi, and Gainward cards (others?) there is truly no shortage of 2-3GB NVIDIA cards for a surround gamer to pick from.

[SirPauly]

I thought it was very smart considering AMD was evangelizing multi-monitor gaming very strongly. What was also smart was offering a 1 gig option for the gamers that desired 1680x1050/1920 x 1080 resolution gaming and not forced to pay for added ram they may not need.

What is wonderful to me is the IHV's are trying to raise the bar of immersion and gaming experience potential for their customers. 3d stereo, GPU Physics and multi-monitor gaming may not be main-stream and desired by all but it sure is nice to have the choice to say yes or no.