The NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN lays solid claim to being the world's fastest single-GPU graphics card. Presented in the same beautiful-looking industrial design we first saw on the dual-GPU GTX 690 and impressively quiet for such a monstrous pixel-muncher, NVIDIA's partners have had to make to do with simply placing their own sticker on the reference design. Showing just how much power NVIDIA is able to exert over its cohort of add-in board partners, EVGA appears to be the only one permitted to even increase the core frequency.
But news reaches us that Gigabyte is planning on releasing a non-reference board that is equipped with its multi-fan WindForce 3X cooling.
Image credit: Gigabyte
This blurry picture is Gigabyte showing off its custom-cooled TITAN card during a stop on a worldwide tech tour. It could really be any high-end graphics card on first glance, but the length of the PCB gives some clues as to its provenance. The folks over at Hardwarezone have managed to snap better pictures, showing more of the card.
Image credits: Hardwarezone
Gigabyte reckons its titanic cooler is able to dissipate 450W, which is plenty for a heavily-overclocked TITAN card, and the cooling apparatus looks a lot like the one implemented on the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. There's no indication of speeds and feeds at this time.
We're not entirely sure on the merits of switching out from the elegant reference design, because it's very competent in all areas. Conjecturing somewhat, perhaps by lowering temperatures by, say, 10°C Gigabyte is able to run at higher frequencies and voltages. And for those looking to push their TITANs to the limit, every MHz counts.
But the obvious problem in launching a company-specific TITAN has to be in adding to the already ludicrous price. A reference Gigabyte TITAN costs around £850, so we expect there to be little change from £1,000 for this WindForce-equipped model. Is this a case of a partner trying to reinvent the wheel? What do you think?
