Final thoughts and rating
Inno3D improves on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 470 graphics card by effectively removing the two main disadvantages associated with the reference design, namely high temperatures and a loud fan. The GTX 470 Hawk accomplishes this by using an in-house-designed heatsink on top of a standard GTX 470 PCB. Our testing observations show that it's able to reduce under-load temperature by up to 26°C. The improvement over the reference cooler is all the more impressive given that the trio of fans hum along quietly.Clocked in at default frequencies and lusciously ripe for overclocking, our sample produced benchmarks within spitting distance of a GeForce GTX 480 when overclocked to 759MHz core and 3,900MHz memory - the highest we've seen thus far from a GTX 470.
Inno3D needs cut deals with its retail partners and make the Hawk available for £330, representing a £30 premium over regular cards. If it can do that and you can live with having a three-slot card in your PC, we see little reason why it won't succeed.
Our look at the first non-reference GTX 470 leaves us with a positive impression. The Inno3D GeForce GTX 470 Hawk is quiet, relatively cool, overclocks well, and is certainly worthy of being placed on premium graphics-card shortlist if it tips up for £330.
The Good
Quality heatsink keeps GPU at 66°C when overclocked and gaming
Triple-fan solution is surprisingly quiet at full load
Overclocks well
The Not So Good
No out-of-the-box overclocking
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS Awards
HEXUS Where2Buy
TBC.HEXUS Right2Reply
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