14 DAY TRIAL // The GeForce GTX 970 graphics card from NVIDIA is the second best Maxwell-based adapter from the Santa Clara, California-based company, after GTX 980. It can also easily get away with a single-fan cooler. Gigabyte still decided to add a couple though.
Not just that, the OEM chose to install a whole new cooler on the product, one with lower noise level (at least some of the time) and much better heat dissipation.
Truth be told, Gigabyte would have probably managed to stick to a single-fan cooler even with all the clock tweaking it did to the poor thing.
But that would have killed off all chances of the card standing out in a crowd. Custom coolers are the bread and butter of NVIDIA and AMD OEMs after all.
The specs of the GeForce GTX 970 WindForce OC
The video card, bearing the model number GV-N970WF3OC-4GD, uses the WindForce 3X cooling solution to keep heat down on the 170W TDP board.
The base GPU clock of the adapter (GM204-200 chips) is 1,114 MHz, while the GPU Boost maximum state is 1,253 MHz.
That is well ahead of the 1,050 MHz / 1,178 base/boost of the reference adapter, especially for the boost state. Gigabyte really isn't messing around.
The memory, on the other hand, was left alone. Just like on the original graphics adapter, the 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM work at 7 GHz frequency.
The card is still a bit slower than the Gigabit GeForce GTX 970 G1.Gaming, which operates at 1178 MHz core and 1253 MHz GPU Boost frequencies, but only in the matter of the base clock.
Other than that, the specs are the same as on every other GTX 970 adapter: 1,664 CUDA cores, 104 TMUs (texture mapping units), 64 ROPs (raster operating units), and 256-bit interface for those 4 GB GDDR5 of VRAM.
Pricing and Availability
The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 WindForce OC video controller should be put up for sale soon, at a price of around $350. Exchange rates would have you believe that the sum is the same as €276, but these products don't usually reflect them. Odds are higher that the tag in the EU will be of €350 instead. We can still hope for the best of course, but don't hold your breath for too long.
The GTX 970 should be more than capable of running any game at full graphics settings, even if it isn't as overpowered as the GTX 980.
