Galaxy GTX 470 GC - The world's first non-reference Fermi
by Ian Cutress on May 7, 2010 12:58 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- GeForce GTX 400
- Galaxy
- NVIDIA
Galaxy have pleasantly surprised us, and the folks at vr-zone. To the table, they bring their GTX 470 GC, a 100% non-reference design graphics card utilising an NVIDIA GeForce Fermi 470 GPU. Measuring 9 inches (compared to the reference 9.5 inches) and featuring a blue PCB, Galaxy have essentially mated a graphics card with a robot figurine.
This 470 uses a quad heatpipe design, aluminium fins and a detachable fan (to help with cleaning) in order to cool the pre-overclocked behemoth; the core recieves a mild overclock of 18Mhz to 625Mhz, whereas shaders and memory stay at the reference 1250Mhz and 3348Mhz (effective) respectively. This combines with the standard GTX 470 fare - DirectX 11, 448 CUDA Cores, 1280MB of GDDR5 memory, a 320-bit wide interface and 4x SLI compatible.
Buyers will find the 2 6-pin connectors on the end, as well as two DVI-D connectors and HDMI with integrated audio.
Initial reports state that the card reaches 88ºC on a full Furmark test, and that this card could be available in the US as early as today (May 7th).
Looking at some of these pictures, there are a few things we like: the design is simple, yet futuristic; the detatchable fan for cleaning is a nice touch; and this custom cooler puts air out of the case (which is an issue with most custom air coolers). However, we notice there two sets of holes for mounting coolers. With a nice design and a very mild overclock, we can only imagine that the customer will be gouged on the price. But stick this in a colour matched Gigabyte motherboard and some blue Kingston HyperX memory, and you'll be looking at a very pretty setup indeed.
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Earthmonger - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Gonna have to be honest and say that this is one of the ugliest GPUs I've seen in a long, long time. I think I like Gainward's new non-reference GTX 470 far, far more."Gainward GeForce GTX 470 GOOD Edition"
Lord 666 - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Not sure why they bothered with the Borg looking video card. Looks interesting for about 30 second and then gets old.Belard - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
We have a Star Wars Card... I'm thinking more Phantom Menace thou :)Or perhaps Robotech. It'll be a neat-O card for those with windows showing their PC gutz.
But in the end, I think the actually frame performance will matter more than anything else.
beepboy - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Reminds me of the toy transformers I used to play when I was a kid. About the news, maybe it should be good, but I think DailyTech is good for it - but when I go here I'd rather have detailed reviews than just news. Maybe have a different tag - like news, or something in the subject to differentiate from other reviews.Amin
blwest1978 - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Anand,I've been a fairly silent reader for years, but I'm not sure I like the DailyTech style news posting and linking to other pages on AnandTech proper. I quit reading DailyTech because of the total lack of professionalism (Jason Mick) and the site being nothing more than links to other websites.
I come to AnandTech for first hand reviews, which have tended to be the least biased and most technical reviews for Hardware Analysis. In addition, AnandTech seems to have good vendor relationships. From a personal perspective, I avoid sites that tend to be primarily index or concatenate links to other sites. One exception to this is Wikipedia.
Anyone can become 2nd or 3rd hand website authors, but where AnandTech truly shines is original, in-house and top notch reviews and work.
IanCutress - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Hi blwest1978,I'm part of the new 'news for AnandTech' team, and part of what we do is to digest news and give a technical point-of-view from and for gamers, overclockers, and users - something a bit different from DailyTech and other websites.
Every so often, another site will get access to a piece of hardware that hasn't been announced, like this Galaxy card, so the best we can do is report on it, what we think about it, and link to that site.
We're currently looking into ways to differentiate the news from the reviews. But rest assured, high quality AnandTech submissions are still the core of the site and will not be disappearing any time soon.
All the best,
Ian
blwest1978 - Saturday, May 8, 2010 - link
Thanks for the reply Ian. It's good to know that the core of the site will stay the same and AnandTech will be giving their insight to links to other sites.Jackattak - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
That might just be the ugliest graphics card on the planet.RaistlinZ - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
It would look better if it was clear plastic covering instead of that ugly pale blue. That said, what difference does it make when it'll be inside a closed case anyway?Earthmonger - Saturday, May 8, 2010 - link
Doesn't matter at all, only the changes to the PCB matter. Many of us are just going to throw the cooler and cover away anyhow, to be replaced by better solutions like liquid cooling. I have to wonder why anyone would try to run a Fermi on air.But anyway, the PCB (and potential improvements to it) is important, the cooler and cover are not.