A Closer Look

Palit uses three heatpipes in their cooler to keep the GPU cool.


A little heatsink provides cooling to the VRM circuitry. Near the back-end of the PCB, Palit added a metal frame that extends the card's length so that the cooler can fit on it. It also makes the whole assembly more sturdy, though a real backplate would have been nice.


Power delivery requires two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is specified for up to 225 W power draw.


Palit is using an OnSemi NCP91164 voltage controller, the same as on the NVIDIA GTX 980 reference design. It is a cost-effective solution without support for I2C, so there is no advanced monitoring. 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.