GIGABYTE GTX570 1280MB 'Super Overclock' Edition Review

The GIGABYTE GTX570 ‘SOC’ Edition appears to tick all the right boxes. Join us as we give the card the Vortez treatment…

Product on Review: GIGABYTE GTX570 Super Overclock Edition
Manufacturer and Sponsor: GIGABYTE
Street Price: £300

GIGABYTE are one of, if not the premier PC component manufacturer. Their popularity among PC enthusiasts has escalated in recent years thanks to quality products that offer fantastic performance backed up by solid reliability. Gone are the days when GIGABYTE products were seen as the newbie component of choice, instead they are now held in the highest regard by system builders and overclockers alike and for good reason too. GIGABYTE motherboards are among the finest available and the full range of graphics cards GIGABYTE offer give the consumer the ultimate choice, regardless of budget. The card we have for review today though is not your regular run-of-the-mill offering, it’s something quite special.

Overclocking can be fun but it can also be frustrating, time consuming and can sometimes end in a product suffering failure due to over exuberance. The ethos of overclocking has evolved from yesteryear where people overclocked for very different reasons. Previously, enthusiasts overclocked their products because the price of newer, faster products was prohibitive. Why buy new when you can overclock your existing product to similar performance levels was the question those involved in the dark arts asked themselves. Very few products offered the capability to overclock, certainly there were no software utilities freely available as they are today. Overclocking meant using on-board jumpers, being an expert solder and having a PhD in electronics was always welcome. Today however, manufacturers have made the whole process very simple. Pre modified hardware, multiple BIOS backups along with intuitive, easy to use GUI’s has brought overclocking to the mainstream regardless of experience. Thus, a free boost in power is now within anyone’s grasp.

Overclocking however comes with no guarantees. You could buy two pieces of hardware from the same store, at the same time, even from the same batch number and overclocking results could yield wildly different results. Having the ‘luck-of-the-draw’ is not good enough for some people though. There are some people who want guarantees, or at the least a guarantee of a good foundation to overclock from. For this reason manufacturers released ‘pre-overclocked’ editions. These cards offer the consumer, as the description suggests, a factory overclocked card which is pre-tested to run at those speeds. Speed binning happens in most components and has for some time, even ‘pre-overclocked’ is nothing new – Intel has been doing it for over a decade. Being ‘cherry-picked’ however means you are potentially getting the best silicon from the factory assembly line and that should, at least in theory at least, give you the means to get the very best overclocks from that particular product family.

The GIGABYTE GTX570 SOC (Super-Over-Clock) is one such card that befits that description. It is factory overclocked but unlike some of its competitors, its overclocks are not mild. The card weighs in at a blistering core clockspeed of 845MHz versus stock GTX570 core clockspeed of 732MHz. By using what GIGABYTE refer to as their GPU Gauntlet sorting process; they do this hard work for you by finding the best balance between overclocks, stability and power consumption. If it passes the Gauntlet then it gets approved with the SOC moniker. Those that don’t make the ultimate grade will go into the parts bin for lower specified GTX570s. Being Super Overclocked doesn’t mean there is nothing left in the tank either as we will find out later in the review because while GIGABYTE have pre-set the best balance of speed vs power consumption, we throw caution to the wind and attempt to extract every last ounce of performance regardless of the effects on the environment!

The GIGABYTE card also comes fitted with the excellent WindForce cooler which we first saw on their GTX560 and which impressed us. Coupled with a plethora of additional features while weighing in at a fair price point and the GIGABYTE GTX570 SOC looks all set to be held high on anyone’s shopping list. Are these features worth the slight inflation in price though? I think it’s time we found out so please join with me as I take you through the card in fine detail which will hopefully allow you to make your own mind up on whether this card is an enthusiasts dream or an inflated, needless piece of hardware in an already overcrowded market…

Premium Graphics Cards from GIGABYTE – the Super Overclock Series

To qualify for Super Overclock Series, a GPU must go through GIGABYTE’s innovative GPU Gauntlet™ Sorting process and it must be equipped with Ultra Durable VGA or VGA+ boards. Designed specifically for overclocking competition and gaming battle, GIGABYTE’s secret weapon Super Overclock Series.

Specification

The GF110 chip shares a lot of its roots with the GF100 core. The GPU still packs an impressive 3.2 billion transistors in a die seize 520mm squared. Its default internal configuration has been ported from GF100 in that the GPU features 512 CUDA cores or shader processors as we are more accustomed to. There are organised in a 4x16x32 block where 16 denotes the number of stream multi-processors (SM) and 32 being the number of cores on each SM. Each SM has its own L1 Cache and a common L2 Cache is shared by all 16. The GPU is still manufactured on the 40nm process.

The GTX570 has 15 out of the total 16 SM enabled for a final 480 CUDA core count. Similarly to the GTX480, it also shares the same number of texture units, which in this case is 60. These represent 32 fewer cores than the fully unlocked GTX580 and 4 texture units less. The size of the L2 Cache is reminiscent of the GTX470 coming at 640KB rather than 768KB as found on the flagship GTX580. Directly related to Cache is the number of ROPs which has been reduced from 48 to 40 on the GTX570. On the other hand, the GTX570 has been presented with a significant clock boost over both the GTX470 and the GTX480 in core and memory clock speeds to avoid “crippled” performance. Consequently, the ROPs are also clocked higher which should minimise the gap between the GTX480 and itself. Thanks to the GF110 GPU, the GTX570 also benefits from the GF104’s superior texture filtering capabilities and further enhancements have been made to the tessellation engine for improved performance in an area where Nvidia already reigns supreme.

The memory subsystem on the GTX570 is more akin to the GTX470 with its 5 memory controllers each sporting a 256MB GDDR5 framebuffer to give 1280MB of available memory. The memory interface is composed of ten 32-bit channels for a 320-bit interface.

GTX580: 16 SMs x 32 = 512 Core, 16 SMs x 4 = 64 texture units
32-bit channel x 12 = 384-bit interface, 256MB x 6 memory controllers = 1536MB memory

GTX570: 15 SMs x 32 = 480 Core, 15 SMs x 4 = 60 texture units
32-bit channel x 10 = 320-bit interface, 256MB x 5 memory controllers = 1280MB memory

The GTX570 looks to be very competitive against the GTX480, with 8.7 billion GPixels filled and 6.8 billion faster than the stock. Because the card is overclocked it matches the GTX480 and 580 TDP of 250W however this is when pitched against stock clocked cards. Remember this card is overclocked so should the stock cards also be overclocked, the GTX570 would use comparatively less power. For example, if a stock clocked GTX570 were overclocked to the same speed as the GIGABYTE GTX570 SOC (845MHz) the GIGABYTE card would actually consume 10% less power according to GIGABYTE thanks to the cards power switching capabilities. Conversely, it is let down by its memory subsystem to generate lower bandwidth than all the cards in the table and its pixel fill rate falls short of the GTX480’s by 8.7%. The gap widened further when compared to the GTX580s memory sub-system. The GIGABYTE GTX570 SOC texture fillrate is however faster than a GTX580, albeit very slight but it falls shy once again on pixel fillrate by a wider margin. How this translates to real world performance remains to be seen but I would imagine the 1.25GB of memory may be the Achilles heel if it has any at all. We’ll see how it fairs when we fire up the maximum resolution with multiple filters applied.

Product Specifications

Graphics Engine: GeForce GTX570
Model: GV-N570SO-13I
Bus Standard: PCI Express x16 2.0 (Compatible with 1.1)
Memory Size(MB): 1280 GDDR5
Memory Interface: 320-bit
Core Clock Speed (MHz): 845
Stream Processors: 480
Shader Clock (MHz): 1690
Memory Clock Speed (MHz): 3800

3D API: Direct X 11 & OpenGL 4.1
DVI Output: 2
HDMI: 1
VGA: Supported using DVI-to-VGA adapter
Display Output (Max Resolution): 2560 x 1600
HDCP Support: Yes
Dual Link DV1: Yes
HDMI Support: Yes
SLI/3-Way SLI support: Yes
Card Dimension (mm): 275 x 115mm

Features

At Vortez we pride ourselves in bringing you a complete and thorough review of any product we assess. While other sites skim over this area we feel that reviewing a graphics card of this nature without giving you a complete run down of its feature set would be criminal.

GIGABYTE Super Overclock Series
• Powered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 GPU
• Integrated with industry’s best 1280 MB GDDR5 memory and 320-bit memory interface
• Features Dual link DVI-I*2 / mini HDMI with HDCP protection
• GIGABYTE GTX 570 SuperOverclock edition
• GIGABYTE WindForce™ 3X cooling design
• Support NVIDIA 3D Vision™and SLI technologies
• Minimum 650W or greater system power supply with one 8-pin and 6-pin external power connectors

Super Overclock Series™
•Serious gamers require serious gear. That’s why we’ve developed the Super Overclock Series. All of the GPUs in these graphics cards have been cherry-picked for top performance, efficiency and reliability. Our innovative GPU Gauntlet™ Sorting selection process ensures that only the highest-performing GPU processors are used in these graphics cards. Coupled with our Ultra Durable VGA boards, users can rest assured that the Super Overclock Series graphics cards won’t let them down as they step onto the digital battleground.

Ultra Durable VGA+
•Gigabyte Ultra Durable VGA+ deliver 1.6X purer power than traditional power design and more stable performance.
•Proadlizer added
•2 oz Copper PCB
•Tier 1 Samsung and Hynix Memory
•Japanese Solid Capacitors
•Ferrite Core and Metal Chokes

GPU Gauntlet™ Sorting
•World’s #1 GPU cherry-picking process Only the strongest processors survive the GPU Gauntlet. GIGABYTE’s database analysis system evaluates the GPU core engine, shader engine. The GPUs with the best power efficiency and lowest power consumption are qualified for the Super Overclock Series. So the question remains…will your graphics card make it through the Gauntlet?

OC GURU
GIGABYTE OC Guru utility is a revolutionary software that features Power saving, Overclocking, Gamer OSD and User-friendly inter design.
Features & Benefits
•World’s 1st VGA Power Saving software utility
•VGA Tweaking Utility Providing the best combination of software and hardware Overclocking
•Extremely Overclocking ability– GPU and Memory Voltage Adjusting Software

WindForce 3X – Vapor chamber-Outward Inclined
•WINDFORCE™ 3X 3D-inclined fin design is GIGABYTE’s first generation triple-fan solution. It features 3 ultra quiet PWM fans, three copper heat pipes and a unique vapor chamber to strengthen the speed of heat dissipation.

The image above demonstrates this cooler in greater detail showing how it disipates heat from the source. As we will see later in the review, this card has an adapted cooler which is split into two subsections and linked by heatpipes. Unfortunately, coolers such as this vent the hot air back into the case so a case with good airflow will reap the best results by exhausting the hot air expelled by the GIGABYTE GTX570 SOC as the WindForce cooler does not vent hot air directly outside of the case unlike stock designs. It is however a necesary evil if you want cooling performance and silence.

If you have missed our previous reviews, here’s a brief rundown on what every NVIDIA GTX570 offers:

3D Graphics
•Full Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Shader Model 5.0 support: o NVIDIA PolyMorph Engine with distributed HW tessellation engines
•BC6H and BC7 texture compression formats
•Gather4 extensions
•OpenGL 4.1 support
•Advanced image quality features: o 32× coverage sample antialiasing
•Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling
•16× angle independent anisotropic filtering
•128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with antialiasing; 32-bit per-component floating point texture filtering and blending
•Interactive ray tracing support
•Full-speed frame buffer blending
•Full-speed FP16 texture filtering
•Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and zdata
•Support for normal map compression
•Adaptive z-cull
•Early-Z

GPU Computing
•NVIDIA CUDA™ technology—allows the GPU cores to provide performance improvements for applications such as video transcoding, gaming, ray tracing, and physics. API support includes: o CUDA C
•CUDA C++
•DirectCompute 5.0
•OpenCL
•Java, Python, and Fortran
•Third Generation Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) o 32 CUDA cores per SM
•Dual Warp Scheduler simultaneously schedules and dispatches instructions from two independent warps
•64 KB of RAM with a configurable partitioning of shared memory and L1 cache
•Second Generation Parallel Thread Execution ISA o Unified Address Space with Full C++ Support
•Optimized for OpenCL and DirectCompute
•Full IEEE 754-2008 32-bit and 64-bit precision
•Full 32-bit integer path with 64-bit extensions
•Memory access instructions to support transition to 64-bit addressing
•Improved Performance through Predication
•Improved Memory Subsystem o NVIDIA Parallel DataCacheTM hierarchy with Configurable L1 and Unified L2 Caches
•Greatly improved atomic memory operation performance
•NVIDIA GigaThreadTM Engine o 10x faster application context switching
•Concurrent kernel execution
•Out of order thread block execution

Nvidia Technology
•NVIDIA SLI® technology—patented hardware and software technology allows up to four NVIDIA GeForce GPUs to run in parallel to scale performance and enhance image quality on today’s top games.
•NVIDIA PhysX™ technology—allows advanced physics effects to be simulated and rendered on the GPU.
•NVIDIA 3D Vision™ Ready— GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, bringing a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D experience to the PC.
•NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround™ Ready—scale games across 3 panels by leveraging the power of multiple GPUs in an NVIDIA SLI configuration. Combine with 3D Vision technology for the ultimate 3 panel stereoscopic 3D gaming experience.

Advanced Display Functionality
•Two pipelines for dual independent display
•Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560×1600
•Dual integrated 400 MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048×1536 at 85 Hz
•HDMI 1.4a support including GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D support, x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound. See www.nvidia.com/3dtv for more details.
•DisplayPort 1.1a support
•HDCP support up to 2560×1600 resolution on all digital outputs
•10-bit internal display processing, including support for 10-bit scan out
•Underscan/overscan compensation and hardware scaling

Video
• NVIDIA® Pure Video® HD technology with VP4 programmable video processor
•Decode acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile, H.264, MVC, VC1, DivX (version 3.11 and later), and Flash (10.1 and later)
•Blu-ray dual-stream hardware acceleration (supporting HD picture-in-picture playback)
•Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
•Noise reduction
•Edge enhancement
•Bad edit correction
•Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
•High-quality scaling
•Motion Compensation
•Video color correction
•Dynamic contrast enhancement and color stretch

Digital Audio
•Support for the following audio modes: o Dolby Digital (AC3), DTS 5.1, Multi-channel (7.1) LPCM, Dolby Digital Plus (DD+), MPEG2/MPEG4 AAC
•Data rates of 44.1 KHz, 48 KHz, 88.2 KHz, 96 KHz, 176 KHz, and 192 KHz
•Word sizes of 16bit, 20bit, and 24bit

Power Management Technology
•Advanced power and thermal management for optimal acoustics, power, and performance based on usage:
•ASPM power management
•Adaptive Clocking
•Adaptive Power States
•Advanced fan control
•Power and temperature monitoring

Let’s take a look at the packaging and contents…

Packaging & Contents

Box Front

I do like understated presentation and the GIGABYTE GTX570 SOC’s packaging doesn’t disappoint. The matt black exterior oozes class and at least for the more discerning consumer, is much more appealing than some of the gaudy attempts made by some other manufacturers. The box front is dominated by a glossy ‘Super Overclock’ emblem (super being highlighted by blazing light) framed by an embossed holographic GIGABYTE moniker to the top left and product title along with the feature set below.

Box Rear

Flipping the box over we find a wall of text which goes into great details depicting the cards features which GIGABYTE believe are key selling points. Rather than dumbing down and using brief phrases, GIGABYTE credit us with an ounce or two of tech knowledge, describing each feature in relative details which is great to see.

Box Side

The side of the box describes the main features of the card in multiple languages.

Inner Box

In contrast to the matt black outer sleeve, the inner box is a sturdy gloss black affair. Again we are greeted with a Super Overclock emblem on top of the box lid which flips up to reveal the contents. The packaging thus far is very impressive, understated yet informative where it needs to be and also solid yet attractive throughout.

Packaging

Raising the lid by popping out the two cardboard side tabs, we find a compartmentalised package. Left to float around on top of the GPU are the HDMI cable, the manuals and driver CD. Luckily the card is protected by an anti-static bag and held fast in place by a hard foam pocket. To the top of the package is a cardboard separator which holds the remainder of the accessories.

Accessories

I was quite surprised at the sparse accessories included with the package while there is everything to get you going, only the bare minimum is included. The accessory list comprises of the following items: Graphics card manual, VGA-DVI adapter, driver and utility CD, twin Molex to 6pin and twin Molex to 8pin PCIe power cables and a mini HDMI to full size HDMI cable. Unfortunately there was no free game included in the package.

Closer Look Pt.1

Card Top

There is no doubting this is one sexy looking graphics card. The triple smoked black fans of the WindForce cooler dominate proceedings which are framed by a black anodised brushed aluminium shroud.

Card Bottom

As you can see, the GIGABYTE GTX570 ‘SOC’ stays true to the trademark GIGABYTE blue power circuit board. While this makes the card stand out from the crowd, I can’t help feeling the overall aesthetics of the card would be enhanced should a matt black PCB have been utilised or at least incorporate a black, brushed aluminium backplate.

Proadlizer Capacitors

On the rear of the card we see that GIGABYTE have utilised 5 NEC/TOKIN solid state capacitors. These capacitors allow for high speed power switching and also act to reduce impedance which will reduce signal noise. What this means is that overclocks could potentially be increased further than usual and also because of the reduction in circuit noise, the overclocks should be easier to keep stable.

SLI Tabs

When one card is not enough, the GIGABYTE GTX570 ‘SOC’ allows adding multiple cards for a SLI array. GIGABYTE have however, thoughtfully included tab protectors should you not wish to make use of SLI.

PCIe Power Ports

The GTX570 requires both 8pin and 6pin PCIe power cables to power the card and GIGABYTE recommend a 650W PSU as a minimum. I think this is very exaggerated for power requirements considering it has a max TDP of 250W. We will examine how much power our test setup draws with the card in place later in the review.

I/O Backplate

As with most NVIDIA cards, the I/O area has 2xDVI ports capable of a maximum resolution of 2560×1600 each. To the left of the DVI ports is a mini HDMI port which is gold plated to match the HDMI cable included. As with the SLI tabs, all of the ports come with plastic dust caps.

Angled fans

Not immidately noticeable is that the fan furthest from the I/O area is angled differently from the other two fans. As we will see on the next page, the reason for this is that the heatsinks fins beneath the fan direct the air towards the rear of the card so along with the prior two fans, they are angled as part of GIGABYTE’s Anti-turbulence design which should reduce noise levels significantly.

Perspective

Overall, the GIGABYTE GTX570 1280MB ‘SOC’ is an extremely attractive card. The card measures 275mmx115mm which includes the slight overhang of the cooling shroud. While the colour choice of the PCB is open for debate, there can be no doubting that the WindForce cooler is very pleasing to the eye while still purveying a sense of power. Hope fully it can back up these great looks with performance.

Let’s take a look at the card in fine detail…

Closer Look Pt.2

WindForce Removal

Removing the cooler was a very simple affair with just four spring loaded screws holding it to the PCB. The core area has direct contact with the copper vapor chamber which is framed by an aluminium standoff that cools the memory via the use of thermal pads.

Fan Shroud Removal

Flipping the cooler over and having the main shroud and fan assembly removed we gain access to the main heatsink which is split into two segments. The main heatsink has horizontal fins which direct air from above the vapor chamber out to the side of graphics card whereas the smaller heatsink towards the end of the card has its fins positioned longitudinally to direct hot air out towards the front of the card. The heatsinks are also angled to ease turbulence and are linked to the vapor chamber via two 8mm nickel plated copper heatpipes.

Heatpipe solder

The heatipes are ‘dip soldered’ to the main heatsink which is common place among heatsinks of today rather than being manually soldered. This process is neater and presumably cheaper without losing any effectiveness of heat transfer.

MOSFET cooling

The card also takes care of MOSFET cooling by having a cooling brace which keeps MOSFET temperatures on both sides of the card under control. The brace is easily removed but the card may prove difficult to watercool due to the additional cooling required on the back of the card.

Naked card

Onto the card itself, we see at first glance it appears to be pretty much standard with the power circuitry towards the front of the card and the main GPU core framed by 10 memory IC’s slightly off centre. Notice the missing memory chips and for those eagle eyed, the ‘Extreme Dual BIOS button found on the GTX580 ‘SOC’ Edition which strongly hints to the fact this is the same PCB used for both cards. Unfortunately this card only has the one BIOS so care should be taken if you intend to edit the BIOS.

Power Phase

The 12 power phases for the GPU are matched by having 12 LEDs on the underside of the graphics card which light up green depending on use. A further two power phases are reserved for the memory sub-system but these do not have LED indicators.

Samsung Memory

The memory chips used on this graphics card are Samsung K4G10325FE-HC04 which are rated to run at 1250MHz (5000MHz effective). I was intrigued to see why GIGABYTE had chosen not to overclock the memory being that this is labelled as a ‘Super Overclocked’ card. I am further baffled why they would choose these chips over the higher bandwidth afforded by Hynix memory used in other high end GPUs. It remains to be seen if this memory overclocks well. One saving grace though is that the OC GURU allows the option of overvolting the memory which may give us a little more headroom when it comes to getting the most from the Samsung memory.

GPU Core

The TIM used on the GIGABYTE card was very good quality and ensured excellent contact with the core. As you can see from the above picture, the whole of the IHS was not covered but as the core itself is much smaller than the protective IHS and as the centre of the core is adequately covered, heat transfer and therefore temperatures should not be an issue.

Test Setup

We have recently made a slight amendment to our selection of hardware and our test setup. The reason for this is that we felt the current crop of resolutions were not stressing the latest generation of graphics cards enough. With this in mind, we have added a Dell 3007 WFP-HC to our system, allowing us to stress the cards by utilising a 2560×1600 resolution. We will however, still include 1920×1200 results as this is one of the most popular resolutions used by gamers.

Display – Dell 3007 WFP-HC
Case – Lian Li PC-P80
CPU Cooler – Prolimatech Super Mega (2xProlimatech 140mm Vortex)
CPU – Intel Core i7 920 @ 4GHz
RAM – 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ Blade DDR3 1600mhz 7-8-7-20 C1
Motherboard – ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply –Antec High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive – GSkill Falcon 128GB & Hitachi 250GB

Graphics Cards:

GIGABYTE GTX570 1280MB ‘SOC’ Edition – Forceware 275.33

ZOTAC GTX560 1GB AMP! Edition 950/4200MHz – Forceware 275.33
SLI NVIDIA GTX560 1GB 950/4200MHz – Forceware 275.33
HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix@ 880/5500MHz – ATI Catalyst 11.5
Lucid HydraLogix = HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix & MSI nGTX580 3072MB Lightning Xtreme Edition @ Factory clockspeeds
MSI nGTX580 3072MB Lightning Xtreme Edition @832/4200MHz & 975/4400MHz Overclocked – Forceware 275.33
ASUS HD6990 @830/5000MHz & AWSUM enabled (pre-overclocked) 880/5500MHz & Further Overclock of 930/6000MHz – ATI Catalyst 11.5
HIS HD6970 2048MB IceQ Turbo @ 900/5600MHz Pre-overclocked & 1000/6000MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.5
Gigabyte GTX560 1024MB @ 830/4008MHz & 841/5016MHz Overclocked – Forceware 275.27
MSI R6970 2048MB Lightning @ 940/5500MHz Pre-overclocked & 1010/6000MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)
Inno3D GTX560Ti 1024MB @ 820/4008MHz & 950/4300MHz Pre-overclocked –Forceware 266.66
Inno3D GTX570 1280MB @ 732/3800MHz, 800/4000MHz Pre-overclocked & 901/4220MHz Overclocked – Forceware 263.09
ASUS GTX580 1536MB @ 782/4000MHz & 903/4220MHz Overclocked – Forceware 262.99
ASUS HD6970 2048MB @ 890/5500MHz & 949/5896MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)

Driver versions are extremely important when comparing a graphics card. It is however often important to update a driver version, especially when a new GPU is released and thus any change in driver will be clearly stated.

Overclocking
For today’s review we will use the Afterburner utility from the MSI to overclock the test subject.

Games:
Crysis Warhead
Metro 2033
Dirt 3
Mafia II
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Far Cry 2
Alien vs. Predator

The games above represent equal bias toward both AMD and NVidia and are among the most demanding games available at present. Future releases will be evaluated for consistency and accuracy and then potentially added to the list when they become available

Synthetic benchmarks:
Futuremark 3DMark 11
Unigine Heaven 2.5
Tessmark 0.2.2
Furmark 1.9.0

Synthetic benchmarks are used to stress each feature of a GPU which may not be present in today’s games. While nothing is certain, the benchmarks above do at least give us an insight into the possible future performance of the graphics card on test, invaluable when evaluating the potential lifespan of a graphics card.

Temperature, power consumption and acoustics:
Furmark 1.9.0

The above application is feared by most manufacturers as it has been known to destroy GPU’s. While it is not indicative of ‘real world’ performance, it does represent the maximum possible stress your GPU could be placed under making it the hardest test to pass. For that reason alone, it is worthy of inclusion in our suite of benchmarks. Power consumption will be evaluated from the wall and will be a total system draw of the specification above.

Sound will be measured from a distance of 20 cm from the actual GPU with the case open. All system fans will be set to their lowest settings. Readings will be taken at both idle and 100% load.

Bundled Software

Utility Setup

Upon inserting the disc we are greeted with the main screen, hyperlinked to each item. DirectX9 is included although why you would not just install the latest incarnation of DirectX from Microsoft I cannot tell. The same goes for the Graphics driver which is available from NVIDIA. I dislike most Internet toolbars, Yahoo! being one of them so other than the OC GURU utility (itself available from GIGABYTE) the utility disc is very basic.

Main Screen

When OC GURU is installed (reboot required), you can load it from either the main programmes menu or quick launch from the task bar in Windows. The layout is very similar to MSI’s Afterburner utility in that the settings are made via sliders and then applied using the ‘Apply’ button. Unfortunately and unlike the popular Afterburner software, the settings cannot be directly dialled in through the keyboard.

Interestingly, OC GURU allows memory overvoltage control and while some beta versions of afterburner also allow this, it is great to see GIGABYTE also making use of this feature. Obviously this is VGA dependent as most graphics cards will not allow this feature due to having this voltage locked. OC GURU also allows you to save up to 5 profiles which can be quickly saved and then pre-loaded at the click of a button.

Gaming

The ‘Gaming’ section of OC GURU allows you to configure brightness, contrast and Gamma, much the same as the NVIDIA control panel. There is also an on-screen setting available which allows you to view FPS and take screenshots for future reference.

Green

The last sub-screen is for the tree-huggers which allows you to set the power saving mode of the card to either ‘Standard’ or ‘Green’. A nice little feature also shows how much power the card is consuming either in total hours use or by current status.

Overall, while OC GURU is a handy tool I don’t see a shift in preference from MSI’s Afterburner quite yet as the OC GURU still needs a little tweaking to make it more user friendly. The precision of the sliders are the main fault I would aim at OC GURU as it’s much easier to type in the value for accuracy than fiddle with a slider. The option to do either would be great. I liked the analogue power phase display but its novelty value soon wears off. In short it’s a fair alternative to Afterburner and should wish to keep your allegiance with the GIGABYTE trademark you will not go far wrong with OC GURU.

Overclocking & Temperature Analysis

Overclocking

As you can see above, the stock card is pre-overclocked on the core from 732MHz to 845MHz. Surprisingly though, GIGABYTE have neglected to apply any overclock to the GDDR5 memory, instead sticking with the stock value 950MHz (3800MHz effective). With the core set so high to begin with I was doubtful there would be much room left for any further overclocking but I was wrong…

Amazingly there was another 135MHz to be had. It would go higher still, passing the 1GHz mark in some application but unfortunately stability was an issue at times so I knocked 20MHz off and at a scorching 980MHz this was rock solid stable passing multiple loops of 3DMark11 for over 2 hours. There was also some

Temperature

To measure the temperature of the card we first measure the ambient temperature. Our review station resides in an air conditioned room with the temperature set to a comfortable 23c.

At idle the GIGABYTE GTX570 ‘SOC’ weighed in at a very respectable 35c. Turning up the heat by running Furmark the temps levelled out at a very, very impressive 67c. You have to remember that this card is overclocked 135MHz past stock as well so to achieve those kind of temperatures under the extreme load Furmark places on the card is quite a feat! The good news doesn’t stop there either as when pushed to its limit with the voltages maxxed out, the card still easily kept temperatures under control, topping out at just 73c. The WindForce is one serious piece of cooling hardware to be able to cool the card down so efficiently. Did it do it quietly though? Read on if you please…

Accoustics & Power Consumption

Acoustics

Often overlooked when purchasing a graphics card is the noise that it emits. We all hear (no pun intended) of graphics cards that run like a jet engine which can have a detrimental effect on a gaming session, regardless of the FPS it churns out. It is therefore extremely important that a graphics card should operate as quietly as possible.

To test for this we will be using a sound meter and microphone setup which will be placed 20cm away from the GPU. The test will take place in a quiet (not sound proof) room with the results for the GPU fan at low (30%) and highest (100%) settings.

Results

I am pleased to report that not only is the WindForce cooler very good at keeping temperatures under control, it does so without so much as a murmur. Even under the highest load the fans were not overly intrusive. The card was only bettered by its less powerful sibling, the GIGABYTE GTX560, which also use of the WindForce cooler albeit with one less fan than the GTX570 SOC.

Power Consumption

For this test, we will be using a wall meter with the test setup plugged in minus the Monitor. Readings were taken at both stock and overclocked conditions each having readings also taken in idle and 100% load (Furmark). FurMark is perhaps not indicative of a true gaming environment and indeed is not recommended by NVIDIA or AMD to test stability of a card but in my view, much like Prime95 for CPU’s, it puts the graphics card under the highest possible stress and presents a good ‘worst case’ scenario. So while it is unlikely your card will ever be stressed as much under normal conditions, it is a good indicator of a theoretical maximum.

Results

At first glance the power consumption of the card may seem a little on the high side but this can be easily explained due to the pre-overclocks applied to the card. Indeed GIGABYTE claim that should a standard GTX570 be overclocked to the same level, the GIGABYTE GTX570 ‘SOC’ would consume approximately 10% less power! I do however have concerns that it still consumed more power than a pre-overclocked GTX580. I guess that’s the price you will have to pay for a card that is pushed to the maximum!

Let’s see if all that power consumption equates to inflated benchmarks scores…

Crysis Warhead

Following the success of Crysis, the stand alone expansion “Warhead” was hotly anticipated to bring more game play, more weapons, improved visuals whilst maintaining better performance, the latter being what gamers wanted most. After all how many people upgraded their rigs just to play this game… In the game, you play as the upbeat Brit Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes, chasing down a Korean nuclear warhead. Throw in some ice shooting aliens and we’re bound to have a great game. It sure delivered.

Testing was done using Framebuffer’s Crysis Warhead benchmarking tool. The tests were configured to DirectX 10 at Enthusiast levels. Each test on the Ambush map was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

Far Cry 2

One of the most hyped games of 2008, Far Cry 2 had some big shoes to fill. It was built to be the next best thing since well… Far Cry I suppose. Combining an open-world game play with highly detailed graphics, physics and AI, what more could we possibly want? The game puts us in the body of a malaria inflicted mercenary hunting down the “Jackal” in the heart of Africa, in a bid to stop an on-going conflict between two rival factions. The storyline can be hard to follow sometimes but I’m no game reviewer, so let’s concentrate on the graphics and performance. After all, we all need to know if our hardware will be able to handle the scorching savannah burning at the hands of our flamethrowers.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Far Cry 2, configuring the settings to Ultra and DX10. The small ranch level was chosen and each configuration was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

Metro 2033

Based on the novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any games out now, making it the ideal benchmark for those looking for the best graphics card.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Metro 2033, configuring the settings to Very High and making use of DirectX 11. The frontline scene was looped 3 times for each configuration. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

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Alien Vs. Predator

Spawned from the popular Alien and Predator franchises, Rebellion have collaborated to bring the legendary war to us through the medium of a first-person shooter. The game forces you to hunt, prey and most importantly survive in the swamp colony of Freya’s prospect as a Predator, Alien or Marine. The stunning visuals add to the sense of dread and terror that we have become so accustomed to seeing with the series.

The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is the new rendition of the widely successful Battlefield series of game. Having more in common with the console release of Bad Company, the sequel hopes to inject the DNA of the timeless Battlefield 2 online experience with the witty action packed single player shooting adventure of the original. As Private Preston Marlowe, your goal as a member of Bad Company is to once again save the world by securing a scalar weapon device.

Fraps was used to test performance. Each test was conducted at the start of the ‘Cold War’ level ensuring that the same actions and paths were taken during the 2 minute sample. All settings were set to the highest available in game with AF set to 16x and HBAO turned on. The average FPS was recorded by FRAPS at the end of each walk through.

DiRT 3

As players race to elevate their global standing, DiRT 3 is back delivering mud, sweat and gears world over: from the intense weather-beaten rally stages of Europe, Africa and the US, to executing performance driving showcases and career challenges where car control is pushed to spectacular limits.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available and DirectX 11 was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Mafia II

Following the success of Mafia back in 2002, the third person action adventure game is back with a new grittier and darker world. As Vito Scaletta, an aspiring made man, your job is to work through the twist and turns of Mafia lifestyle. The more blood spilt, the more you get in return but the lifestyle was never meant to be an ideal one. Set in the visually stunning Empire City, the wartime references provide the ever present back drop to a rife period in America’s history, in which potential for exploitation becomes Vito’s key focus.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available in-game. PhsyX was only enabled if specified in the charts. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

TessMark 0.2.2

TessMark 0.2.2 is an OpenGL benchmark and tech demo that uses the new hardware tessellation (or GPU tessellation) features exposed by the OpenGL 4 API. Hardware tessellation makes it possible to divide a polygon into smaller ones (according to the tessellation level factor) in order to increase polygons density: the higher the tessellation level, the higher the polygon density. A high tessellation level requires much GPU processing power.

TessMark was run in fullscreen, benchmark mode using map set 1 and configured to use OpenGL 4.

3DMark 2011 & Unigine Heaven 2.5

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

Unigine Heaven 2.5

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine™ engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Conclusion

When I first got word that the GIGABYTE GTX570 ‘Super Overclock’ was to land on my desk I will confess I wasn’t overly excited. Sure, I liked the WindForce cooler of the GTX560 we reviewed previously but another remix of the GTX570, another factory overclocked card? Do we really need another hero as Tina Turner would ask? Well do we?

It’s a tough one to answer truth be told. At £300 the GIGABYTE GTX570 is almost into vanilla GTX580 territory and that may be enough to put most people off. Hero or not, the Super Overclock version of the GTX570 is certainly in the high end price bracket so to mix it with the heavyweights it will have to punch well above what a standard GTX570 can achieve before it even begins to tempt prospective buyers.

I was blown away by the cooling design which is nothing short of exceptional and a credit to GIGABYTE as out of all the cards I have tested this year, the GIGABYTE WindForce cooler is the best aftermarket solution by a country mile. It kept the card very cool, even when pushed to its limit but best of all; it did so in relative silence. Compare this to a stock NVIDIA reference cooler and it is like comparing chalk to cheese, they are that far apart. For that reason alone it should be worthy of consideration over a stock GTX580, especially if noise levels, or rather a lack of them are high on your list of priorities.

The packaging was sublime and should ensure your new purchase arrives without so much as a scratch, you may however feel a little short changed with the accessories. While this package has the basics, for such an inflated high price, I would have liked to have seen an included game at the very least. Other manufacturers add in a mouse mat, or other ‘freebies’ but with the GIGBAYTE card, you only get what is par for the course I’m afraid.

The graphics card itself is a stunner. The WindForce cooler not only acts cool but it looks cool too. My only reservation is the blue PCB. This is fine for your run of the mill graphics cards but I would like to have seen something special here to distinguish it from the basic GIGABYTE cards. Some very pleasing eye candy has been produced by GIGABYTE of late with their colour co-ordinated motherboards which it has to be said, look great whatever your preference so one would hope this eventually transfers to the graphics card department in the near future.

Finally, we get to the performance of the card. As expected it performed very well throughout our tests. What I did find surprising is it actually bettered the overclocked MSI GTX580 on numerous occasions which is a fantastic achievement! Sadly, the card proved to be less than successful when the highest resolutions and filters were applied in certain games, namely Metro 2033 which brought the card to its knees due to severe VRAM limitations. Thankfully it was rare where we ran into VRAM limitations but if you intend on using this card to run extremely high resolutions on the most demanding of games you may wish to look elsewhere. 1.25GB of GDDR5 is simply not enough to store the masses of instructions needed to feed the overclocked GPU which as I suspected at the beginning of the review would be the GIGABYTE GTX570 ‘SOC’s Achilles heel.

That said, this is a fantastic GPU and unless you have a 30″ screen to hand or have the available funds for its bigger brother, the GTX580 ‘SOC’, I cannot see any other reason why this card should not be high on your shopping list if you are in the market for a quiet, cool yet high performing card that has the hassle of overclocking done for you. For this reason I am happy to present the GIGABYTE GTX570 1280MB ‘SOC’ our coveted Silver award.

Pros:
-Great performance
-Very good cooling
-Very quiet operation
-Solid state capacitors and chokes for durable, efficient performance

Cons:
-Lack of memory may be an issue for some
-No protective backplate
-Basic Accessories