Look Out! is a new series that will be getting posted over the coming weeks, months etc of who you should be looking out for. So many companies have really moved forward over the recent months and years and started producing some simply fantastic products. With so many companies and so many advancements it’s tough to keep track of everyone and everything. So let me make the job a little easier of who you should be looking out for when it comes to your next VGA purchase.
Over time you’ll see me give a run down on particular companies and what they’re doing with some companies even being seen multiple times due to new advancements in video cards or even motherboards.
Who: MSI
Why: MSI have become hyper aggressive when it’s come to VGA cards over the years with some fantastic series being seen from the company. The most recent series is the Lightning one and cements why we should be looking at MSI when it comes to our next VGA purpose.
What the Lightning series brings is the ability for people who use extreme cooling to achieve some absolutely ridiculous speeds thanks to their own Afterburner voltage adjustment software. What’s so great about the software though and its ability to adjust the core voltage is that even if you’re on air cooling some massive clocks can be achieved since MSI have opted to move away from standard coolers and use their own design including the Twin FrozrII one on recent ATI models.
The first card I really got to take for a spin with the Afterburner software was the low end GT 240; while not the fastest card it gave us the ability to take Afterburner for a spin and see just what was possible. While we did get a massive OC on the model in which you can read the review here it’s no doubt a lower end model that was never going to give us big numbers.
The next time we really got to attack a card with the same software was the HD 5770 HAWK which is still the best HD 5770 I’ve tested to date. Scoring a massive 96% at TweakTown this is a serious card for anyone who wants some serious power. I highly recommend that if you’re interested in the HD 5770 you read the review here.
The latest card to get the same treatment is the HD 5870 Lightning which you’ll see on TweakTown soon enough and no doubt in the coming months we’ll see more models get the same treatment with hopefully the new GTX 400 series from NVIDIA getting voltage adjustments via the same software.
While this might all sound very difficult and scary the whole process is simple, fun and really rewarding; and honestly even if you don’t use the Afterburner software you still end up with a fantastic video card.