Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 SOC review - Introduction

When NVIDIA released their GeForce GTX 480 the first issue that arrised was a very hot chip. The heat levels had to be compensated for somehow, NVIDIA opted for a cooling solution that was rather loud. With the release of the GeForce GTX 470 things had gotten a fraction better, but the GPU was still putting out lots of heat and as a result the cooling fan rotation of the cooling solution had to be configured at a high-RPM, making both products very noisy when fully stressed.

As such many NVIDIA board partners went on a quest to find better 3rd party solutions but only a handful of the AIB/AIC partners managed to actually put some interesting stuff on the table.

Gigabyte is now saying it out loud and proud; "we have a custom cooling solution for the GeForce GTX 470". Next to that they improved the PCB, applied 3-way fan cooling and overclocked the board. All facts combined created the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 SOC edition (Super Overclock).

A really nice card we can say right away. Right now prices are dropping thanks to competition from ATI, but also the popular GeForce GTX 460 paved the way for price-drops. We spot prices starting at 350 EUR for the product we test today. Will it be good? Will it be able to handle the heat levels and keep noise under control? I mean, Gigabyte applied really serious heat pipe based cooling solution on top of the GTX 470 with three active fans.

Well, you are here to find it all out, head on over to the next page, but not before you've had a good look at the product tested, and you'll agree with me... aesthetically this is a good looking card design.

A secret spy shot of the product tested today ;)