Final words and conclusion
Final words and conclusion
Would the GeForce GTX 580 not have been released, then this card would have been amongst the best of the best to recommend. We so much appreciate what Gigabyte tried to do here. Make no mistake, except for the actual GPU, this is a 100% custom product that is running at near GTX 580 performance, heat and power consumption.
Gigabyte has been had by NVIDIA though, they never expected the GTX 580 to be released so soon already. The GTX 480 SOC was probably meant for the Christmas season most high-end release and that GTX 580 is flat down in the middle of this GTX 480 SOC.
But sure, we like very much what Gigabyte did here, we see a 100% custom PCB, dual BIOS, fourteen power phases, all monitored by active LEDs, we spotted voltage measuring points for use with a DMM, the sheer cooler is doing a tremendous job as well without being noisy, despite its higher clocks power consumption remains well under control at 250W and to top it off, this card comes factory clocked from 700 towards 820 MHz with the gDDR5 memory clocked at 3800 MHz. All in all this is a very impressive product that Gigabyte put to the market here which runs merely a few percent slower than that GeForce GTX 580.
Now that is what you need to keep in mind, as the GeForce GTX 580 is absolutely the fastest single GPU based product on the planet. And this GTX 480 SOC is merely a notch slower. The fact that the GTX 580 was just released is a blow in the face of Gigabyte, make no mistake there, however as a result they might want to dump their stock / volume they have available.
So if this product reaches a store near you and let's say you can pick it up 40 bucks cheaper then really ... go for it. You'll never notice the what ? .. 2-3 FPS difference in gaming, yet you receive a magnificent looking product with dual-BIOS and the great cooler. In addition to that, there still is overclocking headroom left. Another 50 MHz on the core and another 200~250 MHz out of the memory seems quite doable, adding some more value to this product.
Yes, the GTX 580 is sitting smack down in the way of the GTX 480 SOC, but if you can find it priced right it is definitely a product that is far more exciting than a reference GTX 580, and as such we would recommend it for performance, sheer looks, dual BIOS and cooling alone.
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