Gigabyte and Club 3D Launch 4 GB Graphics Cards ~ The World is Mine

Oct 3, 2012

Gigabyte and Club 3D Launch 4 GB Graphics Cards

10/03/2012 07:35:00 PM

dannzfay

Due to either wanting to get rid of excess memory chip inventories or just to capitalize on the lingering tendency of people to be drawn to large numbers, Gigabyte and Club3D have prepared a pair of new graphics cards with extra-large memory capacities.

We'll talk about Club 3D's creation first, since it is closer to the price that mainstream users are willing to pay for a graphics card. As an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 board, it has a memory interface of 128 bits and a graphics processing unit (GK107, 28nm, 384 CUDA cores) clock frequency of 900 MHz. Speaking of which, the 4 GB RAM are of the DDR3 variety and operate at 1,600 MHz. As for connectivity, Club 3D designed the low profile card (though not single-slot) with dual-link DVI, HDMI and a D-Sub output. Club 3D expects prospective buyers to pay 177 Euro in exchange for the adapter, which corresponds to $177 in the US, even though exchange rates say it should be $228 (conversion rates never reflect the true prices, by region).

The other video board, called Gigabyte GV-N670OC-4GD, is a GeForce GTX 670 OC with 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, rather than 2 GB. The memory interface is of 256 bits, while the GK104 graphics processor functions at 980 MHz base, 1,058 MHz GPU Boost frequencies. The performance is quite a bit higher than the stock levels (915/980 MHz) and owed not only to the WindForce 3X cooler (450W triple-fan / triple-slot), but also to the Ultra Durable Design (special components with higher stability and endurance). Its price is of 439 Euro ($439 – $560), but only pre-orders can be placed at this time. For those seeking the rest of the specs, they are as follows: 1,344 CUDA cores, 3-way SLI support 6,008 MHz memory speed and dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. On that note, multi-GPU setups should be easier to establish than some might expect, now that SLI-capable motherboards tend to have triple-slot spacing between the primary and secondary PCI Express x16 slots.