GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 470 Super Overclock Video Card

Introduction

The Super Overclock series from GIGABYTE is one of my personal favorite series and the main reason for this is that they're bringing the series to a wide range of budgets. The last generation of 200 series cards saw the higher end models get the treatment. In the HD 5000 series ATI range we've seen both the HD 5870 and HD 5770 get it which cater for two different price ranges. And today we're seeing the GTX 470 get the treatment.

If the success of the GTX 460 is anything to go by, we're sure that this model will also get the same treatment which means you can get your hands on a nicely overclocked GIGBAYTE model no matter what your budget is. It's ultimately a win for you, the consumer.

Since GIGABYTE sent us the card nice and early, we don't have a retail package. Instead let's get straight into the card itself and then have a look at the specifications that make up the Super Overclock model.

The Card

The first thing we can spot that's new to the SOC model is that triple fan cooler. Worth noting is that unlike the one we've seen on the Sapphire HD 5970 TOXIC, this isn't a triple slot one. It's still only dual slot which for people wanting to go SLI is good news.

As for the rest of the card, you're not in for any surprises. We've got two 6-Pin PCI-E power connectors towards the back of the card, while closer to the front we have our two SLI connectors and connectivity is two Dual-Link DVI ports and a single Mini-HDMI one.

Specifications

Specifications is ultimately what makes the Super OC series and out of the box this card sports a 700MHz core which is way up on the default 607MHz that NVIDIA offer on reference models.

With the core being bumped up, we of course see that the Shader clock has also headed north. That's gone from 1215MHz to 1400MHz. As for that 1280MB of GDDR5 memory, GIGABYTE has opted to leave that at the default 837MHz or 3348MHz DDR.