Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 Super Overclocked Edition Video Card Review

In a world dominated by reference design video cards we find extremely satisfying when a company puts forth the time and effort to push the design limits, and create something unique.  This was our first experience with a Super OverClocked Edition card from Gigabyte and we have been impressed from the start. 

The Super OverClocked Edition cards are not your typical factory overclocked products but rather a complete redesign focused on extracting the best available performance.  The reality is cards like the GTX 470 SOC do extremely well, both as a factory overclocked product and in the capable hands of the extreme overclocker and gaming enthusiast.
 
Performance was exceptional and easily outpaced the stock GTX 470 and was close to rivaling the scores posted by the GTX 480.  Performance like that is not easy to come by, to help make it possible Gigabyte has used the quality components found in the Ultra Durable VGA+ program and expanded the typical reference design to include 12 power phases, a much larger heatsink, and additional controls specific to overclocking.

Surprisingly enough the only time the card acted up was during manual overclocking. The video card did not respond well to custom settings in the OC Guru and using other overclocking utilities resulted in awful crashes. We can only hope that as the OC Guru software is updated it will allow users to push this cards ability much in the way we are accustomed to.  Until then you can enjoy increased performance, lower temperatures, and better power consumption directly from the box.

Incredible performance to power usage ratio
Silent and effective cooling
Pre-overclocked goodness
Absolute best quality components
Tweakers dream GPU

Needs a little bit more headroom for overclocking
Heat gets exhausted into the case
Very long card