Galaxy Hops on Custom GTX 470 Bandwagon

Because of the high thermal design power and operational temperatures of NVIDIA's DirectX 11-capable GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480, these two cards haven't exactly proven very easy to overclock or equip with a new kind of cooler. Still, this doesn't seem to have discouraged NVIDIA's partners, considering that new models of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 have already debuted. Not wanting to be left behind, Galaxy has decided to join the fray as well, with its GTX 470 GC.

The GTX 470 GC isn't exactly available yet. In fact, the only reason the web knows about it is because the folks over at VR-Zone managed to get their hands on it, box and all. Predictably, the unique cooler mechanism is the main element that makes the device stand out, though there are some modifications to the clock speeds as well.

The Galaxy GeForce GTX 470 GC has 448 CUDA cores, 1,280MB of GDDR5 memory and support for 3-way SLI multi-GPU setups and 3D Vision Surround. As for actual frequencies, the GPU operates at 625MHz, whereas the shaders and memory are clocked at 1,250MHz and 3,348MHz, respectively.

Now comes the list of differences that exist between this version and the stock card. In addition to a shorter PCB (9 inches instead of 9.5), the video controller uses, obviously, a different cooling mechanism, specifically a dual-slot cooler with four copper heatpipes and a copper base. There is also a fan that can be raised, so that the heatsink can be easily dusted.

Unfortunately, the report did not exactly say what price consumers should expect this product to bear, though it shouldn't be much higher than the one demanded by the stock model (about $350). End-users need not despair, of course, considering that it shouldn't be more than a day or two before the device actually arrives in stores.