If you like to take your overclocking seriously and always have a tank of liquid nitrogen in your garage for days where you just want to push your hardware to its limits without worrying about air temperature, MSI's new GTX 1080 Ti Lightning could be the graphics card for you. Not only does it come with an advanced air cooling solution of its own and enhanced core clocks for added performance, but it also has the ability to switch to an "LN2" mode, which raises the limits for thermals and current, giving you extra headroom to push the card further.
Until AMD debuts its Vega graphics cards later this year, the standard GTX 1080 Ti is the fastest non-Titan graphics card in the world, but MSI's Lightning version should make even that card seem slow in comparison. Its clocks can reach 1,721MHz when boosted in "Lightning mode." That's quite an increase over the standard TI's 1,582 MHz.
It can also be switched to gaming and silent modes, which reduce clocks in differing amounts to improve the running life of the card and also help it run more quietly. The triple fans used on this card offer solid air cooling for day to day usage and can operate very quietly indeed if needed - a rare feat for such a powerful card.
However, it's in the overclocking that this GPU should really shine. It sports an advanced power design with a new digital PWM control for added stability and with LN2 mode, you can push the current up much higher than a standard GTX 1080 Ti and means you don't need to consider doing volt modding the hard way.
In turn that could help you reach entirely new heights of core clocks. Considering some have pushed such cards well over 2.5GHz when under liquid nitrogen cooling, there should be plenty of headroom in MSI's new creation.
The only downside is we don't have a price for this card just yet. It is slated for release in July though, so there isn't long to wait to find out.
