temperatures at a maximum of 67’C
when gaming. That makes it easily
the coolest high end graphics card
ever tested by this publication.
Again you’ll be hard pressed to
find a better graphics card for your
gaming machine than this one.
There are of course many competing
graphics card, but none can match
what GIGABYTE is offering in
terms of performance, aesthetics,
operating temperatures and of
course price. It is simply astounding
that this GPU can be had for $690.
Unlike with the G1.Gaming,
GIGABYTE, stipulates that this GPU
is ready for LN2 overclocking, via
an LN2 switch and an additional
6-pin PCIe power connector on the
card. Power is fed to the card via
this additional connector when the
switch is engaged and an alternative
BIOS is used. This BIOS supposedly
has all the protection mechanisms
disabled, allowing for those
38 The OverClocker Issue 37 | 2016
adventurous soles to reach those
high clock speeds in a competitive
overclocking environment. It is
an admirable addition and the
intention is appreciated, but it
doesn’t quite come together for a
number of reasons. The first is that,
even if the BIOS was tuned for LN2
overclocking with absolutely no
blockades, there simply isn’t any
software you may use which would
allow you to increase the NVVDD
and FBVDD voltage. So you’re pretty
much stuck with the voltages that
ship out the box. Of course you
could manually override these by
doing physical mods on the card,
but then it defeats the purpose as
the card isn’t then LN2 ready as
claimed. Where this may actually
help is for those running chilled
water or perhaps even Dry Ice,
where you’ll likely be able to extract
more performance from the card
than you otherwise would using the