In Figure 4, you can see the video card with its cooler removed. Note how it requires only one six-pin auxiliary power connector. In Figures 5 and 6, you can see the cooler by itself. The heatsink is rounded, with a 730 mm fan in the middle and a copper base using vapor chamber technology, a technology similar to the one used by heatpipes.

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Figure 4: Video card with the cooler removed

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Figure 5: The GPU cooler

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Figure 6: The GPU cooler

The reviewed card uses eight 1 Gbit GDDR5 chips, making its 1 GB video memory (1 Gbit x 8 = 1 GB). Each chip is connected to the GPU using a 32-bit data lane, making the video card’s 256-bit memory interface (32 bits x 8 = 256).

The chips used are H5GQ1H24AFR-T2C parts from Hynix, which support up to 1.25 GHz (4.5 GHz QDR) and since on this video card memory is accessed at 1 GHz (4 GHz QDR), there is a good 25% margin for you to increase the memory clock rate while keeping the chips inside the maximum they support. Of course you can always try to overclock the memory chips above their specs.

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Figure 7: Memory chips

This video card doesn’t come with any accessory or games.

Before seeing the performance results, let’s recap the main features of this video card.