Wednesday, October 22nd 2014

Gigabyte Launches GeForce GTX 970 Mini-ITX Graphics Card

by
btarunr
 Discuss (31 Comments)
A time-traveler from two years ago would see the graphics card below to be a $100-ish mainstream fare, but looks can be extremely deceptive. This puppy packs more bite than a Radeon R9 290X. Gigabyte's latest creation puts a GeForce GTX 970 into a compact board that should play well with mini-ITX builds. The GTX 970 ITX card (model: N970IX-OC) features a full-height PCB that's about as long as a mini-ITX motherboard (17 cm), and a dense WindForce cooling solution that uses a single 100 mm fan to ventilate a dense aluminium fin heatsink, to which heat is fed by two 8 mm thick, and one 5 mm thick copper heat-pipes.

The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include one HDMI 2.0, two dual-link DVI, and three DisplayPort 1.2 connectors. It comes with factory-overclocked speeds of 1076 MHz core and 1216 MHz GPU Boost, compared to reference clocks of 1051/1178 MHz. The memory is left untouched at 7.00 GHz. The best part about this card is its price. Gigabyte is charging no premium, pricing it at US $329.99.
Source: Tom's Hardware

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31 Comments on Gigabyte Launches GeForce GTX 970 Mini-ITX Graphics Card

#2
NC37
Love how they don't outright tell you how much VRAM it has. Oh, its overclocked and we aren't charging a premium...but we won't tell you how much VRAM. Come on Gigabyte.
Posted on Reply
#3
TheLostSwede
News Editor
NC37Love how they don't outright tell you how much VRAM it has. Oh, its overclocked and we aren't charging a premium...but we won't tell you how much VRAM. Come on Gigabyte.
Dude, TPU got the info from Tom's Hardware, not Gigabyte, so chill out. Besides, all of the GTX 970's are 4GB.
Posted on Reply
#4
rooivalk
It's funny, years ago having many vram is like scam and nowadays it's all the rage.
Posted on Reply
#5
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
rooivalkIt's funny, years ago having many vram is like scam and nowadays it's all the rage.
Because you're now getting quad-HD monitors for $300, and 4K ones for $500.
Posted on Reply
#6
brutlern
Nice, I would like a review for it though because I am curious about the cooling solution and also the power consumption.
Posted on Reply
#8
CounterZeus
rooivalkIt's funny, years ago having many vram is like scam and nowadays it's all the rage.
The new graphic cards can actually use it. Few years ago they couldn't because the card itself was too slow or they even changed the memory type to cheaper ddr2 which made the card perform worse than the standard one...
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#9
DayKnight
rooivalkIt's funny, years ago having many vram is like scam and nowadays it's all the rage.
When you have idiots telling the sheep at large that they recommend a 4gB GPU, then rage it is.
Posted on Reply
#10
Lopez0101
Wat? Shadow of Mordor blows past 4GB of VRAM. As more and more games use ultra high-res textures the VRAM usage is only going to go higher.
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#11
techy1
well it is nice to finally see GTX 970 in this size - it is a dream come true for m-ITX-ers... low power, low heat, top preformance in one card.... but I hope this Gigabyte is just a "take one" and will be throwed in trash and there is more to come - because frontplate is completely locked with bunch of useless ports (no ITX-er will need them all) and especially in m-ITX case - you need every vent hole to get that hot air out of that thinny case.... "but NO, sir, here you go -a bunch of ports for your convienence" :D
Posted on Reply
#12
micropage7
looks nice but i prefer mini itx board with full card, it looks pretty kick a$$
Posted on Reply
#13
dj-electric
I agree.

These days MITX case manifactures usually give enough space for longer cards.
This card is rather taller and will fit less MITX cases as a result. A smarter choice will be to make it 3CM longer instead.
Posted on Reply
#14
PLAfiller
micropage7looks nice but i prefer mini itx board with full card, it looks pretty kick a$$
I prefer going smaller: www.3qit.com/picture/article/106/105595.jpg .Why we don get THIS kind of LP cards in Europe?!?!?! I only render short advertising videos on AfterEffects., so I don't really need the GPU powaaa. But LP-based RIG looks different :toast:
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#15
huguberhart
Dj-ElectriCI agree.

These days MITX case manifactures usually give enough space for longer cards.
This card is rather taller and will fit less MITX cases as a result. A smarter choice will be to make it 3CM longer instead.
Not exactly. Theres a plenty of baby towers and shoebox cube cases that have just that enough room for this card. If a case is below 15L it probably would be to hot for this card.
Posted on Reply
#16
ensabrenoir
..........total awesome sauce........from every angle. And i like the connection options, it covers just about every possible user.
Posted on Reply
#17
GhostRyder
Great looking card and something I love to see. These MITX cards are just so amazing to me because they just bring together a whole level of new ideas possible in a small case. It makes the worry of taking out HDD cages or front mounted PSU's taking up your GFX room a thing of the past!

Very nice Gigabyte!
Posted on Reply
#19
apoe
DayKnightWhen you have idiots telling the sheep at large that they recommend a 4gB GPU, then rage it is.
New consoles means that big titles (multiplatform) are not restricted to decade old hardware. Many games are already using much more vram than in the past few years since the consoles have 8 GB of shared memory. You should not be surprised that people want higher vram cards now...

That said, it seems that the recommended system requirements for some games aren't justified at all, asking for 4 GB vram when the game shouldn't require nearly that much.
Posted on Reply
#20
Disparia
Very nice, though I agree about the ports. Triple DP (or Triple DP + HDMI) would have been the preferred configuration for most of us here I believe, leaving room for vents. Luckily we'll see more from MSI and others and we'll be able to choose from multiple ITX-sized cards.
Posted on Reply
#21
荷兰大母猪
Mini windforce cooler with a 4400rpm fan lol. It is really good choice for itx users. Actually asus leads the itx high performance gpu, the first is the gtx670mini, really a good choice.
Posted on Reply
#22
Tardian
I agree with techy1 that Gigabyte did an epic fail regarding the ports. Did the designers think for one moment about HTPC? Why not add some D-sub 15 ports for CRT? The design should have had the fan blowing hot air out the vent in the front plate. Cool and quiet is what we want.
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#23
WithoutWeakness
TardianI agree with techy1 that Gigabyte did an epic fail regarding the ports. Did the designers think for one moment about HTPC? Why not add some D-sub 15 ports for CRT? The design should have had the fan blowing hot air out the vent in the front plate. Cool and quiet is what we want.
It has DVI-I so a cheap passive DVI-VGA adapter can be used if needed. You can also get active DisplayPort-VGA adapters if you want to plug in even more VGA devices. There's no need for a dedicated VGA connector when DVI-D or DisplayPort can do better.
Posted on Reply
#24
1c3d0g
WithoutWeaknessIt has DVI-I so a cheap passive DVI-VGA adapter can be used if needed. You can also get active DisplayPort-VGA adapters if you want to plug in even more VGA devices. There's no need for a dedicated VGA connector when DVI-D or DisplayPort can do better.
Damn right. Death to VGA!
Posted on Reply
#25
Tardian
My VGA comment was an attempt at sarcasm. Displayport 1.3 and HDMI 2.0 are what cards like this need,
Posted on Reply
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