The KFA2 GTX570 is one of those cards that impresses on some levels but is let down on others. Take the aesthetics for example. The cooler is very attractive and certainly a break away from the norm. The fan along with the LED's only add to the originality and make for a very impressive looking piece of kit. Sadly, the blue PCB will not be to everyone’s tastes. The length of the card is great and would fit all but the smallest of enclosures but I fail to see the point in reducing the length of a card only to add the PCIe power ports at the end of the unit which only serves to add to the length that was reduced in the first place.

The price of the card has got to be a major plus point is very competitive however, to offset this cost you will have to settle for mediocre overclocking when compared to the competition. Perhaps I'm being a little too harsh here but I dearly wanted to see this card to perform extremely well given the excellent cooling design, both in terms of the heatsink assembly and the innovative fan latching system. The power consumption was nothing ground-breaking either and while the card was extremely quiet, even under load, the fact that hot air is partially exhausted back into the system means other case fans will perhaps have to compensate to keep enclosure temperatures under control.



We are big fans of the GTX570 family here at Vortez thanks to its excellent bang-per-buck and here is where the KFA2 finds its footing, beating the competition. £240 is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but considering it can game at high resolutions it is relatively low when compared to other graphics cards capable of hi-res gaming. In today’s current economic climate, people are looking for products that offer great value for money and this is where the KFA2 GTX570 scores high. The chink in the graphics cards armour though, as with some other GTX570's, is it's crippled in some games by the lack of VRAM when gaming at the highest resolutions with all the trimmings applied. It was only a couple of years ago when people scoffed at the need for 1GB graphics cards. Times change though and with 2GB of VRAM rapidly becoming a necessity and gaming at a HD res of 1920x1080p being the most popular, buyers would do well to consider how long 1.25GB of GDDR5 will be enough. Today it is adequate, tomorrow who knows?

In short, should the KFA2 have overclocked higher or indeed at least matched the competition I believe we would have had a definite winner here. It looks the part, cools well and is quiet in operation. Sadly, despite its product title it doesn't Kick Frigging Ass on this occasion. What it does do is give great value for money, especially when you consider the card has a custom cooler, non-reference PCB and still manages to match the price of a reference NVIDIA GTX570. For that reason it receives our value award.

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to KFA2 for providing todays review sample.