In the first months following the announcement of a new graphics card we can usually buy only a copy of the reference sample with stickers and accessories peculiar to the particular brand. This was also the case with the Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 cards released by AMD in late 2010. However, there was already a variety of custom-made products as soon as the spring of 2011. They feature more effective or less noisy coolers, custom PCBs with reinforced power circuitry, pre-overclocked GPU and memory frequencies, and gorgeous accessories with various extras. Among them we can name such products as Gigabyte GV-R697OC2-2GD, ASUS EAH6970 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5, HIS 6970 IceQ Turbo, PowerColor PCS+ HD6970 as well as the two products we are going to discuss today: MSI Radeon R6970 Lightning and VTX3D Radeon HD 6970 X-Edition.