A Closer Look

Gigabyte's cooler uses six heatpipes and a copper baseplate. You can also see the thermal pads which provide cooling for the memory chips.


The sturdy baseplate extends a bit beyond the back of the card, providing some extra protection for the heatsink's tubes while improving stability.


Power delivery requires two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is specified for up to 375 W power draw.


Gigabyte is using an OnSemi NCP81174 voltage controller, the same as on the NVIDIA GTX 980 reference design. It is a cost-effective solution without support for I2C, which makes advanced monitoring impossible. Its VID-based voltages can be monitored and controlled through NVIDIA's driver.


The GDDR5 memory chips are by Samsung and carry the model number K4G41325FC-HC28. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (7000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's new GM204 graphics processor brings the Maxwell architecture to the high-end. It is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with a transistor count of 5.2 billion and a die size of 398 mm².