14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA finally introduced its first mainstream graphics card with DirectX 11 support, the GeForce GTX 460, and already its partners have almost finished flooding the market with customized models. The company even released a new driver for the GTX 400 series. Needless to say, Gigabyte would not let itself be outdone by its rivals and, even though it didn't really match ECS or even EVGA in factory overclocking prowess, it made a point of refining other areas.
Gigabyte technology has both 768 MB and 1024 MB models on the way, all of which have tweaked clock frequencies and, more importantly, the WindForce 2x cooling solution, which promises to drive temperatures lower than the stock fansink. The reference models have the GF104 running at a frequency of 675 MHz. Gigabyte, on the other hand, drove that clock all the way up to 715MHz. Additionally, the boards have 336 CUDA cores and either 768 MB of GDDR5 or 1 GB GDDR5 VRAM, with memory interfaces of 192 bits and 256 bits, respectively. Furthermore, the memory clock itself is set at 3,600 MHz.
While the specs themselves may not be the highest out there, Gigabyte seems to have struck in another area, that of stability and reliability. For one, its creations boast Japanese solid capacitors, Ferrite/Metal core chokes and Low RDS (on) mosfet. Additionally, they have 2oz copper PCBs that further increase their endurance. Finally, Gigabyte threw in the aforementioned WindForce 2x cooler, which uses a pair of copper heatpipes and two inclined fans to disperse heat.
The 768 MB and 1 GB video boards that gigabyte plans to sell connect to monitors via dual-DVI and HDMI outputs and will soon start shipping. Unfortunately, the exact prices aren't known, but they should be in the same $200-$250 range as those of its rivals' offers.