MSI busts out military-class GeForce GTX 260 Lightning graphics card

We've often bemoaned that a manufacturer does little to differentiate its graphics cards from the rest, usually relying on the reference design. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 has been around for a while now and offers decent value at £150 or so for the 896MB-equipped card.

MSI has taken the GTX 260 to the limit with the release of the N260GTX Lightning, replete with 'military-class' hardware, so let's take a look.

Using a custom dual-fan cooler, MSI asserts that the N260GTX Lightning is the world's first graphics card with a 10-phase PWM - eight for GPU and two for memory - together with voltage-points that let you bust out the multimeter and check voltages when overclocking.

Speaking of overclocking, the Black Edition of the card is bundled in with a touch-sensitive 'AirForce' panel that increases frequency and voltages by applying them, via USB, to a software app. bundled with the package.

Clocked in at 680MHz core, 1,458MHz shader, and 2,100MHz memory, the Lightning only ships with a double-sized 1,792MB frame-buffer. If you're going to go all out and create a custom GTX 260 you might as well throw everything you can at it.

Available with (Black Edition) and without (Regular) the AirForce panel, MSI's GeForce N260GTX Lightning, one of the most outlandish packages we've seen, should cost north of £200. Trouble is, adding all the glitz means that it competes against cards that are intrinsically faster, no matter how much overclocking potential the Lightning may have, but we can't have it both ways.