The GeForce GTX 400 series are NVIDIA's first DirectX 11 graphics cards and at last, now they are widely available. Gainward, which is one of the leading NVIDIA exclusive partners, obviously means business. Apart from the reference cards, Gainward is among the first partners to launch a non reference card dubbed the GeForce GTX 470 GooD edition. We have talked about these GeForce GTX 480 already, and today it's time for their standard GeForce GTX 470. This graphics card version is currently available for around $449. This Gainward GeForce GTX 470 comes with reference clocks, meaning runs at 607/3348MHz effectively with the shaders set at 1215MHz and using the standard cooling solution. - FudZilla

Gainward GeForce GTX 470 Graphics Version Review

Gainward prepared a new box design for the new cards. And now the company is once again a premium NVIDIA partner, Gainward rather didn't miss out on this chance to emphasize that on the GeForce GTX 470's box. Our today's GeForce GTX 470 comes with reference design and clock speeds. And Gainward recently announced its GooD card, which also runs at these reference clocks but packs superior cooling which among other things, usually does mean more overclocking potential. This GeForce GTX 470 uses five heatpipes for heat transfer, just like its big brother. The heatpipes are short and managed to fit beneath the plastic hood.

Overclocking always requires some kind of sacrifice, in this case we had to push the fan to maximum speed, which made the fan a bit too loud. We didn't meddle with voltages but managed to push the GPU from reference to 750MHz. We used Gainward's ExperTool to alter these clocks, but this tool is also in charge of fan regulation. Note however that although the graphics core and shader clocks can be set independently via their respective sliders, overclocking will only run if the shaders run at twice the speed of core itself. The Gainward GeForce GTX 470 is a great card, and there are virtually no cons when it comes to performance.

This fan, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired as the board can get pretty loud when under heavy load. Those that find these occasionally high noise levels discouraging can always resort to Gainward's GooD version with non reference cooling and an slightly higher price tag. These standard GeForce GTX 470 video cards currently go for about $449.