In an effort to remedy the weak graphics-card market penetration in the UK, Gigabyte rolled into London on its multi-country tech tour, to give the assembled press compelling reasons as to why it will now succeed in this cutthroat market.
Focusing on the NVIDIA product stack, Gigabyte has one clear aim to boost sales in the UK: it wants to release the best GeForce GTX 480 card going. The company is banking on this halo product to bring awareness to the rest of its NVIDIA GPU products.
Bullish prospects?
So why is Gigabyte being so bullish on its prospects for GTX 480? Let's take a look.
Gigabyte
GTX 480 SOC
Gigabyte
GTX 480 SOC rear
The soon-to-be-released GeForce GTX 480 SuperClock's PCB is practically identical to the HEXUS-reviewed GTX 470 SOC's. Gigabyte says it picks the very best NVIDIA GPUs, screening them individually for frequency headroom, and then slaps the voluminous WindForce 3X cooler on top. The company reckons that the trio of angled fans provide better PCB cooling coverage than strictly down-facing models.
Gigabyte GTX
470 SOC's cooler - you'll see this on GTX 480 SOC
The 12-phase power circuitry and Prodalizer capacitors are also brought over from the GTX 470. The GTX 480 SuperClock will ship with a standard BIOS that provides reasonable voltage adjustment - for both the GPU and memory - enabling users to push more juice through the card via the bundled OC Guru software.
Lots of volts
Providing up to 1.1V for the GPU and 1.6V for the memory as standard, which should enable a solid overclock, the coolest feature of the upcoming card will be availed by pressing the button the bottom-right corner of the PCB and then rebooting the computer. The button's function is to toggle between the standard BIOS and a custom firmware that gives access to a wider range of voltages. Gigabyte calls it the 'LN2' BIOS and it'll offer GPU adjustment up to a card-burning 1.4V and memory up to 1.85V, as well as optimisations that purport to get around the cold-bug problem that can afflict CPUs and GPUs when run with esoteric cooling and at sub-zero temperatures.
If those voltages aren't man enough and you're of the world-record-breaking persuasion, setting super-high 3DMark scores for breakfast, Gigabyte will provide select users the opportunity of using a crazy BIOS that offers 1.6V GPU and 2.1V memory. Holy smokes, Batman.
No shipping frequencies or pricing have been announced as yet; we're betting that Gigabyte wants to see what competitors offer before declaring numbers. You will, however, see it at select retailers in November.
Differentiation is key
Our thinking is that the graphics-card market is heading in the direction of the motherboards', where top-tier manufacturers are trying to outdo each other with a raft of specific features that promise greater overclocking and lower power consumption. It's clear to us that Gigabyte has MSI's Lightning range of high-end graphics cards and Afterburner software very much in the crosshairs.
Gigabyte may well have the fastest GeForce product on the shelves in the coming weeks, yet we feel that a halo product is only the very first step into boosting market share in a hugely competitive area. You can bet your bottom dollar that NVIDIA's other AICs won't take this kind of incursion lying down.
Would you buy a Gigabyte graphics card? If not, what would deter you from the purchase? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the HEXUS.community.
