In this competitive market, the most well performing cards wins, and these cards often come at streep price. Even just upgrading can become expensive. To help bridge the gap between two cards, you can take a lower end card and overclock it yourself. For users who cannot or do not wish to tinker with their card's clock speeds, Gigabyte are now also offering an overclocked edition of the popular and powerful GeForce GTX 470 graphics accelerator. The step up to an GeForce GTX 480 can cost as much as $200, depending on the manufacturer or memory size chosen. This GeForce GTX 470 of course costs more than a normal version, but it is still much cheaper than a standard GeForce GTX 480 edition. - Bjorn3D

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 Super OverClock Preview

The box is a little more plain than most overclocked edition cards. We are used to seeing fantasy creatures, or attractive women on the cover. This is not to say that the design is bad, or that it even matters since our main concern is with the product inside the box. Inside we find a GeForce GTX 470 in a layer of foam, with the included accessories packed around the card. The board also has an anti-static bag around it to prevent any static from bricking the card before the box is opened. These Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 Super OverClock edition is a powerful card, as shown by our testing giving the competition a good run for their money.

With the ability to compete with an Radeon HD 5770 CrossFire system, this card packs a considerable punch. Unless users decide to go for the high-end models, however this CrossFire setup costs a considerable amount less. Conversely, the single GeForce GTX 470 setup eliminates some headache caused by CrossFire errors, and a single video card also takes up less room in a case. Unfortunately, Gigabyte does not back any of their cards with a warranty. This shows a lack of confidence in their cards, but we have not had too many issues with Gigabyte cards yet. Though warranty should be offered as a default given for hardware.

Nonetheless, the high temperatures reached by the Fermi cards makes us wish that Gigabyte would include a warranty. Our main complaint with this card is that DirectX 11 is barely used, and for these same price users can buy an AMD card and have better performance in everything but DirectX 11 games.