On The Bench: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 Super Overclock

[verrul]

stalker is like crysis and metro poorly coded rushed out without proper optmisation that most games should go through

 

[AMW1011]

Wait so I get thumbed down for asking questions and asking the reviewer to go into a part of the review in more depth? Am I not aloud to ask of the almighty Tom's editors? Damn.

 

[sohei]

delta vs ambient lol....
so guys this mean 25 celsius at least + 70 celsius = 95 celsius
i think guys you have to take the Fahrenheit scale from now on

 

[atikkur]

the best 470 card so far, eh..
interesting the noise level.

 

[Yargnit]

Just for the heck of it, this is a screen shot of my task manager taken last summer I believe showing that some games do in fact use more than 2gb RAM. http://www.yargnit.com/download/eq23gb+.jpg The game (if you can't tell from the process name) is Everquest 2, an MMO, and as you can see in the screenshot it can hit over 3gb memory usage on a single client. (They have lowered it a bit since then due to complaints, but it can still break 2gb frequently.

Was only having 3gb in the test machine a factor, doubtful. But to say absolutely that no games use over 2gb is false. I recall on the forums for an RTS I used to play (Sins of a Solar Empire) someone posted that after they modded the executable to not force a limit to RAM usage, they had the game actually using over 10gb at one point. (However this was also on Linux I believe)

I'd never recommend less than 4gb even for a budget build at this point 4gb/6gb is the minimum I'd consider, and on systems over ~$1200 (or ~1800 for tri-channel) I'd double that to 8gb/12gb to future proof.

 

[Yargnit]

Ok, link to image didn't post, trying that again.

Game at 3gb+

 

[Guest]

This card is silly. Why spend an Extra 70 for an OC card, when for an extra $100 you can run dual 460s in SLI!

 

[dEAne]

I was well convince with this card including it's price too.

 

[nebun]

how does this card compare to the 480? i would love to a comparison, tks

 

[cobra5000]

[citation][nom]kansur0[/nom]Why don't they reveal how this card affects other parts inside the system? This thing is blowing what I would assume to be hot air into the case. Does this not put a strain on other parts in the system? CPU temps? Power supply temps? RAM temps?Also...put this card up against a stock 480. Those cards vent the air out of the case.[/citation]
Dual-slot cards like this, typically blow air out of the case. This increases air flow and helps lower case temperature.

 

[Guest]

In terms of value for the buck, it doesn't come close to an OCed GTX 460, many of which come at 800MHz+ and can be found for $220-230. SLI with these is a beast. See a review of them compared to ATI 5870 in Crossfire at HardOCP.com

 

[jeffredo]

We absolutely needed a reference GTX 480 at least and preferably an HD 5870 in this line up for comparison. You could have done better.

 

[stingstang]

[citation][nom]chefboyeb[/nom]magicandy oesn't 3GB of ram seem kind of low for a modern i7 gaming rig? Yeah, 3gb is kinda low.. I wasnt even aware they made 3gb tri-channel kits for the x583 gigs of ram is not close to even being bad for an Intel X58 rig. I have 3 1gig supertalent ddr1800 on an Evga X58 SLI LE MOBO paired with an I7 920 overclocked to 4.1 (1.23 VCore), and 2 9800GTX+ Superclocked Sli-ed, and the entire setup flies... Even WEI score is a 7.4... It handles Crysis with buttery smoothness... Think about it, how much of your 6gigs of ram, does your system really ever use at any instance? Before 6 became affordable, 3 was the way to go, unless you just starting building computers that is...[/citation]
I have 4gb DDR2 1150, and Starcraft uses ALL of it. Sure, Vista could be the culprit, but time might be coming where we all need 6gb or more.

 

[Guest]

Looking at the graphs, you should start all the axes at zero. if you start it at 50 decibels then it visually exaggerates the differnce between the 2 cards. Remember that a graph is supposed to show a visual comparison between the objects being benched. You basically forcing people to say,"Hey the stock one is 6 times louder than the oc one, oops, I didnt see that the graph starts at 50dB, so that means it is, umm, 60/50, and um taking into account that dB are logarithmic, uhm, let me get a piece of paper". i.e. an extra level of confusion.

 

[stingstang]

@Cleeve: Wow. You just referenced a tech article from more than 2 months ago. Don't you know that any tech articles like that are useless info after 2 months?

 

[Guest]

how is this card in comparison with the Zotac GTX 470 AMP!?

 

[JMdos]

I would definitely like to see how the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 AMP does against this Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 Super Overclock.

From each manufacturer's website I saw that the ZOTAC one has a slightly higher Memory Clock but lower Shader Clock than the Gigabyte one

 

[dimar]

For regular gaming PC, I think 3GB is optimal for 32-bit Windows. 4 or 6(x58) is best for 64-bit.

 

[muckle]

Anyone been using this? I am strongly considering buying this cards within the next few days. My previous choice was a cyclone 1gb 460. Worth the extra money?