
With the GPU voltage increased from 0.996 V to 1.167 V, we raise the Gigabyte GV-N470SO-13I’s core clock to 800 MHz and the shader clock to 1600 MHz. The result is a stable overclock. And, from what we’ve seen in the past, this is more than you can usually expect out of a reference GeForce GTX 470.

3DMark Vantage shows how overclocking boosts performance over the reference card by 19%.


In Crysis, the overclock really separates the Gigabyte GV-N470SO-13I from the reference GeForce GTX 470’s performance, leapfrogging into GeForce GTX 480 territory, as demonstrated in our Factory Overclocked High-End Graphics Cards review.
Previous
Next
Summary
Ask a Category Expert
It matters to compare value.
Kudos to them for dropping the power / heal / noise though. VERY attractive card.
It matters to compare value.
Kudos to them for dropping the power / heal / noise though. VERY attractive card.
In the section entitled "Overclocked Performance" there is a link given at the end to some factory OC'd GTX 480 benchmarks. This card, when manually overclocked further, is just about as good as a GTX 480 and even comes close to the Factory OC'd 480.
I was planning to do a whole GTX 470 SLI rig with water cooling so I could get a nice OC like this, but I think I might forgo the water cooling and get these for my Xclio Windtunnel w/side fan blowers.
Yeah, 3gb is kinda low.. I wasnt even aware they made 3gb tri-channel kits for the x58
So... you didn't bother trying to push it any farther? Plus, 800 MHz on the core is pretty common for a GTX 470. This lazy overclocking section ruined it for me, and I'm in the market for a GTX 470.
Can you please give us the max overclock Don? That would be awesome.
Also, what fan speed is the Gigabyte and reference GTX 470s at during the temp analysis?
magicandy :
Doesn't 3GB of ram seem kind of low for a modern i7 gaming rig?
Yeah, 3gb is kinda low.. I wasnt even aware they made 3gb tri-channel kits for the x58
3 gigs of ram is not close to even being bad for an Intel X58 rig. I have 3 1gig supertalent ddr1800 on an Evga X58 SLI LE MOBO paired with an I7 920 overclocked to 4.1 (1.23 VCore), and 2 9800GTX+ Superclocked Sli-ed, and the entire setup flies... Even WEI score is a 7.4... It handles Crysis with buttery smoothness... Think about it, how much of your 6gigs of ram, does your system really ever use at any instance? Before 6 became affordable, 3 was the way to go, unless you just starting building computers that is...
Does the 460 have a better OC'ing capability?
Can someone please explain how they got that 9%? (20252-18070)/18070 yields the claimed 12% increase. Am I really that bad at math?
cheers
You're wrong. I had a stick go bad and sent it in for replacement. I went from 4 gigs to 3 gigs to 2 gigs and now back to 4. CS:S stutters with only 2gb of ram(win764). Loading anything is ridiculously slow with 2gb. Tabbing out of a game back to windows takes 3 seconds with 4gb and a full minute with 2 gb.
There's very little difference between 3 and 4 gb, but I have noticed some. When starting up a game there are a couple of pauses when it's getting going on 3gb but after that they're pretty much the same from what I can tell.
Telling someone all they need is 2gb is a lie. Even my dad complained when I gave him a computer (vista32)with 2 gb. When I put in another stick the whining stopped. Pull some ram out of your computer then come back and tell us it's not needed.
Agreed and 3gb isn't much these days as it used to be. Personally I can use more than 4gb easily when playing 4 instances of wow while web browsing.
but, in aprevious article, they demonstrated that no game uses more than 2GB of ram, and they have no background applications like we do as it's solely for benchmark purposes. So,2 gigs for the game and one for the system.
I have a 2 gigabyte laptop and when I play Crysis on it Windows swaps many processes and kills alot of features such a Windows Aero. Idling at the desktop in my laptop, Windows 7 64 will use roughly 900 Mb... after playing a game and turning it off Windows uses 400 Mb which slowly increases back to 900.
So the conclusion is that you can run most games with 2 Gb of ram but your overall computer experience will decrease dramatically because of the constant swapping.
On a side note: Does Windows swap even if there is still ram left? For example on 2 gigs of ram Windows 7 64 uses 900 Mb... on 4 gigs it uses 1.1 Gbs... All on clean installs... the 2 gig computer running home premium and 4 gig ultimate.
Also...put this card up against a stock 480. Those cards vent the air out of the case.
Nope. We've done tests showing there's really no practical difference between 3GB or 6GB when it comes to gaming:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264-3.html