The basis for XTREME GAMING is of course the revered WindForce 3x cooling system. This cooler surrounds the PCB and internal components as is the first thing which takes the attention.
Overall the design with its metal shroud looks rather sleek and will likely pair up with other hardware very well.
The actual size of this graphics card is: 42x 279x 121 mm, which isn’t necessarily that big for a graphics card of this calibre. Compared to other GIGABYTE cards which use the WindForce cooling solution, there are some slight modifications to the design which we’ll cover over on the next page of this review.
Flipping the card over, on the reverse we have a large steel backplate which protects the components on our graphics card and also prevents it from flexing or bending. Having such a feature on a graphics card is encouraging as it provides rigidity and prevents potential damage.
GIGABYTE has given the backplate some cut-outs to provide some ventilation.
Using WindForce x3, our graphics card uses a triple fan configuration. GIGABYTE has given these cooling fans a unique blade design which should realise 23% better airflow compared to the reference cooler.
Further to this each of the cooling fans and the WindForce logo glow once the graphics card has power and there are additional indicators for “STOP” and “SILENT”. When the graphics card is only being used for light usage the “STOP” LED will illuminate and the cooling fans will stop spinning – As shown in our video review.
Although the GTX 980/980Ti are reserved for ultra-high resolution gaming our GTX 970 comes with a generous supply of display ports which extend to 4K:
• 1x DVI-I port (Up to 2K)
• 3x DisplayPort 1.2 (4K @ 60Hz)
• 1x HDMI 2.0 port (4K @ 60 Hz)
All of these ports are gold-plated and having such a nice selection of ports paves the way for multi-screen configurations and ensures you’re able to run the card at optimum settings.
As is customary for an NVIDIA graphics card, our GTX 970 arrives with multi-SLI ports which allows us to pair up this card with more than one other graphics card.
The reference GTX 970 requires 6+8pin PCI express power but our XTREME GAMING requires 8+8pin – the custom PCB, factory overclock and upgraded components allude to needing more power. As per the technical specifications, GIGABYTE suggest using a 600W PSU to effectively run this graphics card.
