Retaining the much acclaimed Twin Frozr IV cooler from the Radeon 7970 Lightning (our review), the MSI GTX 680 Lightning edition promises to marry cooling efficiency with overclocking dexterity. No details on the clock speeds yet but we were a tad disappointed that it only came with 2GB of frame buffer instead of the 4GB that we're starting to see from the competition. The new boy also incorporates Military Class III components and its GPU reactor contraption which provides extra capacitors behind the core for improved power potential. The GTX 680 Lightning retains the same I/O panel configuration as the reference cards (gold plated though) with a single DP, HDMI and two DVI connectors.
At the other end of the card we get the usual 3x3 OC voltage check points (VGPU, VMem, VPLL) and 8 + 8 pin PCIe power connectors for some extreme power draw.