iChiLL at Inno’s pad. Which is a kind of terrible pun. But it does not reflect at all on the Inno3D GTX470.
Ah, Inno3D. Typically known as one of NVIDIA's strongest partners, Inno3D is perhaps more known for its ability to take a bunch of cards and get them out to the market in volume, something the company's recently done in Australia with the help of distributor Altech. A far cry from last month's trickle of Fermi cards, at time of writing we're starting to see them creep through to stores and ultimately to people's systems at home. With a price sitting at $470 online, Inno3D sits between other budget players, though its offering in particular seems quite compelling.
Inno has been known in the past to include games with their cards (or in the case of the GTX285 Overclock, two of them!), and when we first heard of this card it was described as containing copies of both Alone in the Dark and Warmonger - unfortunately, the card we received didn't have either of these. Including them would've driven up the price, so it is understandable, though disappointing. To make up for the missing games somewhat is an included cloth mousepad. While it is branded with an "iChiLL" logo, the 'pad itself is actually pretty great to use - and it doesn't slip around much on a desk either.
Physically, the card is a pretty standard reference design fare. A simple black shell with a single squirrel-cage intake fan guides cool air from within the case through a series of aluminium fins, picking up the card's heat and venting it mostly out the rear of the chassis. The expansion slot is heavily vented, though still bears two DVI ports and a single HDMI Mini connector. Power needs are fulfilled by two 6-pin PCIe cables, and in all, the card is very close to the reference design bar the stickers on it.
Internally the card sports a single GF100 'Fermi' core that contains 448 CUDA Cores, which run at 608MHz and do most of the processing legwork. There's also 1280MB of GDDR5 memory running on a very wide 320-bit memory bus, sort of like splitting a high-pressure hose into 320 separate ones and pointing them all at a baby. Unfortunately for the baby, it's trapped within a card that devours 215W of power under load - in other words, one that makes for a very hot and uncomfortable environment for anyone, baby or no.
Temps ranged from 43 degrees Celsius at idle to 88 load, with noise levels varying from a quiet-ish 53.5dBA to a hey-look-at-me-you're-still-not-listening 67.7dBA. Apart from re-establishing the fact that NVIDIA's recent cards are freakin' hot, you'd think that it'd also be limited in overclockability due to these extreme temps. Well, we had thought that too, until we fired up EVGA's Precision (at time of writingstill the only tool that can reliably overclock these cores) and bumped the card up massively.
How massively? We're talking an extra 29 per cent core clock increase to 782MHz (+174) and a further eight per cent memory speed increase to 903MHz (+66). For a core already running almost hot enough to boil water, it surprisingly only increased five degrees to 93, and sat there for twenty minutes straight. Definitely not a guaranteed overclock, but it's a great sign that these cards have got some serious potential in them!
Performance in games places it somewhat close to a 5850 in Crysis, though GRID and Vantage are slightly slower. Unigine is boosted by the dedicated tessellation units within the GF100 core; but ultimately, this is a card to buy if you *must* buy NVIDIA. Considering the price, that's a hard choice.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012