GIGABYTE GV-N570SO-13I Pro Reviews

Recent history shows us that Gigabyte knows how to engineer a high-quality graphics card based on NVIDIA's GPUs. The GTX 570 Super Overclock is another case in point: it's well-built, pre-overclocked, and practically silent under load. Push it farther with some overclocking of your own and it rewards the user with the highest frequencies we've seen from NVIDIA's second-rung (single) GPU. We have no reservations about how the company has gone about constructing this class-leading GPU, but such has been the focus on cooling and speeds, which is considerable, that retail pricing is £300 - or 25 per cent higher than the cheapest GTX 570s we could find.You know a product is good when pricing alone is the sole concern. £300 is a touch too close to GTX 580 and, potentially, two GTX 560 Tis for the Super Overclock to be recommended outright. Still an excellent proposition, Gigabyte can turn it into a five-star product by encouraging retail partners to snip the cost to £275. As it is, the Gigabyte GTX 570 Super Overclock is the finest example of the GPU we've seen thus far... though you literally pay for this privilege.

Usually at this point in a graphics architecture’s life, phrases like “long in the tooth” and “insufficient for today’s games” are the first words out of a reviewer’s mouth. However, even though we are using a whole new stable of applications (with the exception of 3DMark 11 and Metro 2033), it is almost impossible to lay any criticism at the GTX 570 Super Overclock’s feet. This card has what it takes to deliver playable framerates in some of today’s most demanding games without breaking a sweat. Whether or not that says anything about the state of today’s in-game graphics is beside the point since it proves that the GTX 570 is just as relevant now as it was at launch.