Nvidia GTX770 images break cover, MSI Lightning looks good

If the Internet is to be believed, Nvidia will be unveiling their new Geforce 770 series next week – and not as a paper launch, but as a product that’s readily available from most retail stores. In all likelihood its going to be shown at Computex, but that hasn’t stopped the rumour mill from doing its thing.

Snapshots for the GTX770 Lightning appeared online and it looks great. It retains MSI’s new black and yellow colour scheme and has an extra added bit of oomph.

: MSI GTX770 Lightning

: MSI GTX770 Lightning logo

: MSI GTX770 Lightning ports

: MSI GTX770 Lightning power connectors

: MSI GTX770 Lightning extra chip

The card itself retains the trademark TwinFrozr design and it looks identical to the original GTX680 Lightning. Because Kepler still has a lot of breathing room left, Nvidia has opted to re-use the same products one tier lower in price, so a GTX680 becomes the GTX770, and so on.

The back reveals two DVI ports (one dual-link, the other single-link with VGA capability), one HDMI and one Displayport video output. You can see to the left of that picture that the circuit board is completely custom, as it rises up above the SLI fingers. The vent at the back is the same small one we’ve seen on other high-end dual-slot GPUs, so most of the heat instead gets blown around in your chassis anyway.

The card also retains two 8-pin PEG power connectors, giving it a theoretical 375W power draw limit. In reality, it’ll probably be much less than that, but its good to see that there’ll be more than enough juice available. Turn it over and there’s a new surprise – a separate chip embedded onto the board and sandwiched by the backplate. This is probably a new controller to handle the extra power delivery and allow for much higher overclocks than what was previously possible with the GTX680 version – and that card was scary fast.

Overall, it looks like this will be the GTX770 to beat. Roll on Computex Taipei!