Gainward Phantom GTX570 Review
Gainward Phantom Up Close
Published: 17th January 2011 | Source: Gainward | Price: TBC |
Up Close
Clarity is definitely the order of the day here. No need to have pictures taken from the front of Steven Jackson books here. The only slight odd thing is the stylised use of a lower-case h in the PhANTOM. The only thing we can think of is that it means ph as in acid balance. But that makes no sense.
The accessories package is the standard fare we're used to seeing with a graphics card. A slim manual, a power adaptor, a DVI adaptor and the driver disk that's out of date the moment it's pressed.
The card itself... WOW. Stunning. It looks like a water-cooling radiator from nearly every angle and it took a while to manage to get the right combination between light and angle to ensure that you got a little peak into what lies beneath.
This is much more like the way you'll see the Phantom usually. Bristling with heatpipes and a very smooth from. Of course the major change is that the Phantom has no obvious fans.
Moving the card around you can see that beneath the top section of the heatsink lay three 80mm fans which provide the cooling. It's like a combination between a cover on a normal heatsink, and extra surface area. Either way it's different and certainly eye-catching.
As well as the very subtle main box the card itself has a classy gold Gainward logo on the top face. This would marry perfectly to the Gigabyte UD7 we've just reviewed. Anyone for a black and gold rig?
Underneath the cooler the board is a standard nVidia GTX570 as we'd expect from the standard specifications.
The most impressive thing about the cooler is that it's a single item. There aren't any complex backplates or similar accoutrements, rather the cooler, fans, top piece and cabling all come off in one go.
With the cooler off we can take a good look at how the fans are sandwiched between the main body of the cooler and the top section that hides it all. Ingenious.
Most Recent Comments
nice review again Bryan
lolz|
Originally Posted by Zeals
Now that is one fine looking card, shame it takes up 3 PCI slots, so I don't think you'll be able to run it in 16x/16x SLI on the UD-7. |
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Originally Posted by adicool96
What does bryan mean by less standard ways of increasing the voltage? Does it work for the gtx580 |
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Originally Posted by tinytomlogan
Some cards dont have Voltage tweaks enabled in the back end bios of the cards, but there are ways around it. We dont normally touch these in reviews but both thought we would find out how far the card would go if we did. |
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Originally Posted by adicool96
How do you bypass that? Maybe you could make a guide or something? |
Anyway, good looking card but the performance is somewhat disappointing. I had higher hopes for the 570 considering its price.
Would make a tastey silent addition to the D14 i have on the way.
If this card ends up costing much more than the ref model then there is no point in buying it.. Your card will run cooler but will dump all the hot air in to your case. The card looks good, but when installed, all you can see through a window is the black edge and Gold Gainward name.
With no voltage tweakage allowed by the bios and no meaningful factory overclock this card seems a bit poo to me.
People go on about waiting for the non ref designs for cooler cards to allow a little more overclocking headroom but this doesn't offer anything like that and clocks less than the ref card for what I expect will be a price premium. It might be quieter, but my 570 runs as good as silent.. My PSU is louder.
Unimpressed.
Good review as always guys.. Just a shame Gainward didn't put a better version of the bios on the card with higher clocks and some voltage allowance.
Edit: Just finished watching the video.. I'll take some of that back as if you can edit it in the beta of Afterburner then that's just as easy as opening any other software to do it.
Out of curiosity, what was the max Afterburner allowed on the voltage? 1.1v?
Inquiring minds want to know......
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Originally Posted by timby
So it begs the question The GTX570 or the ATI 6970? Inquiring minds want to know...... |
http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase17.5&prodID=B566551
unless this is a lie which it could be.
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Originally Posted by Delusion77
looks really nice |
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Originally Posted by timby
So it begs the question The GTX570 or the ATI 6970? Inquiring minds want to know...... |
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Originally Posted by Zeals
If you're going to go with two cards or more 6970, since it scales better. But for just a single card 570 all the way. |
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Originally Posted by murphy7801
You can also remove the price TBC http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase17.5&prodID=B566551 unless this is a lie which it could be. |
You owe me a KB by the way.. ROFLMAO!|
Originally Posted by Bungral
Wouldn't necessarily trust them as they always seems to quote low to get the traffic through Google shopping searches then when you click check stock, they are 80% of the time out of stock. |
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Originally Posted by Bungral
Ahh fair enough.. £30 premium for the cooler which isn't bad I guess if it actually helped. |
3gb 580 version looks like a beast
On 100% fan speed, it sounds like an hair dryer
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Originally Posted by PurpleTrance
I have one of these. It's alright, unlocking voltages can be done with the new afterburner beta. 3gb 580 version looks like a beast |
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