News Just In: A Single Slot GTX 470 from Galaxy
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 19, 2010 8:06 AM EST- Posted in
- Announcing
Power and heat output are often issues which stride the minds of graphics card enthusiasts. Sufficient cooling and a beefy power supply are often a prerequisite if one wishes to invest in NVIDIA’s latest Fermi offering. So what happens when we catch word of a single slot graphics card containing a Fermi GPU?
Hot on the heels of Galaxy’s custom GTX470 GC, the GTX470 Razor (or ‘Katana’ in Japan) is set to be officially launched at Computex 2010, and looks like the bigger brother of the Galaxy GTX260+ Razor, released in September 2009. It is an air cooled, 10 inch long blue PCB, with a fan that draws air in from all sides. Galaxy is utilizing a vapor chamber cooler to better channel heat from the GPU straight to the to the all-copper heatsink and fin assembly in this compact design, with air pushed throughout the assembly and back into the case - not an ideal situation, especially in multi-GPU setups. Requiring a 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors, the card is expected to have NVIDIA specified reference clock speeds, 1280MB of GDDR5 memory across a 320-bit interface, coupled with dual DVI-D and mini HDMI outputs.
With the card being single slot, the fan will have a lot of work to do to keep the card within a reasonable temperature window – on our test of the reference GTX470 design, we saw a load temperature during Crysis of 93ºC, so expect the Galaxy fan to run fast and loud. Also, at a 10 inch length of PCB (0.5 inches over the reference design), a sufficient length case would be required. The single slot nature of the card will in no doubt appeal to folders (who don't mind using an open test-bed), wishing to stick six or seven of them into a single motherboard with a couple of power supplies to boot.
The use of a GTX480 style PCB, in terms of length and power connectors, also gives rise to the potential of a single slot GTX480 in the future. No indication of prices or release date yet, we may receive that information when Computex 2010 opens on June 1st.
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Calin - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Fermi cards might need air cooling of the power circuitry even if the graphic chip is water cooledsdolson - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
They don't appear to need air-cooling of the power circuitry, at least not judging by the full-cover water-cooling blocks already available from EK, BitsPower, Koolance, etc.sloothy - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
So this card is power hungry and makes huge temps.... um anyone else not impressed? Cmon NVIDIA try another strategy. I am still trying to keep the temps on my 8800gt under control.Breathless - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Apparently you have a pretty crappy 8800gt, or the thermal paste wasn't properly applied.wwwcd - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Noise to kill peoples!CharonPDX - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
I have a workstation that this would be great in. Because of the setup of the slots, I need to use the slot immediately next to the x16 slot, so this will allow me to have something better than my current 9600GT in there. Being a workstation chassis, it has good cooling already, and is likely louder on its own than this card. (Dual redundant 800W PSUs aren't exactly quiet... They're louder *OFF* than my gaming desktop computer is under full load.)Mr Perfect - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
It always seems kind of funny how people slap massive tower heatsinks on their CPUs, but then expect the GPU to have a cooler half an inch wide. The GPUs are drawing more power then the CPU these days, so I don't envy the engineers who had to design this thing.ClagMaster - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
This is an interesting card because I always use single slot cards in all of my rigs.If AT has an opportunity to test this new single slot GTX 470 from Galaxy, I would like to know:
The operating frequency of the GPU
The operating frequency of the Memory
The operating voltage of the GPU
The operating frequency of the Memory
The GPU temperature Idle
The GPU temperature Fully Loaded
The operating power Idle
The operating power Fully Loaded
For this particular card. I do not believe a GTX 470 is really designed for single slot heatsink solutions at standard operating frequency and voltages. So I suspect this card is downclocked and undervolted to control the thermal loadings.
I would also like to know whether this card can operate at lower voltages successfully. It would be interesting to see how low a voltage and how low a frequency this card can run. If I can get this card to run at 65W fully loaded and be 3x more powerful than a 9600GT, then its worth the money for me.
Thanks
DanNeely - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
It's possible; but their singleslot 260 card runs at stock speed; so galaxy does have a proven record in squishing two slots of cooling into a single slot without having to cripple the card.AlexKitch - Thursday, May 20, 2010 - link
I wouldn't, in my wildest dreams, buy card that runs this hot. As some comments have already mentioned, the longevity of a chip running at these kind of temperatures should be seriously questioned.I run a 5850 at 1050MHz at 30C (40C fully loaded), on water. Even if it were on air, I'd be worried at 80C