MSI has decided that it is about time they update their Lightning graphics card series and the new incarnation will be based on the HD 7970 Tahiti GPU. Featuring a custom PCB and new Twin Frozr IV cooling, the new MSI HD 7970 Lightning certainly drew a low of attention at Cebit.

As noted, the new HD 7970 Lightning is based on a custom and larger PCB, features 14+2-phase digital VRM, Military Class III components like Hi-c CAPs, SFC and Solid CAPs, backplate and a new feature called the Reactor Core. According to few first details, the Reactor Core is apparently an add-on device that plugs in the backplate cutout on the back of the card, holds additional tantalum capacitors, few blue LEDs and should provide additional stability for extreme overclocking.

The new card also features voltage monitoring headers and DIP switches for voltage unlocking. As far as the specs go, you are still looking at Tahiti XT based Radeon HD 7970 card with 32 Compute Units or simply 2048 stream processors and 3GB of GDDR5 memory. MSI didn't shed any details regarding the clocks but it is pretty obvious it will kick off with a decent factory overclock.

The entire card is cooled by the fourth iteration of MSI's highly praised Twin Frozr cooler that now features five copper heatpipes and two 90mm fans with Dust Removal technology.

Unfortunately, the precise launch date and price are still unknown.

You can check out more pictures here.