KFA2 GeForce GTX 470 EX OC

KFA2 are the European vendor for its parent company; Galaxy over in America, and they are not afraid in the slightest to make this known, in fact they are proud to boast this. Unlike some other companies, they are unique in that ALL of their facilities including support, RMA and warehousing are based in Europe and their primary goal is to provide products that have two key elements - Performance & Quality'. Their product base comprises of premium NVidia chipsets, built ground up on non-reference PCB's and have non-reference fans, in fact nothing about the cards in the slightest are reference. Every single card that they offer is overclocked from stock, meaning that when you look at the same models from other brands, their specs are straight away a step up. When NVidia released the 470 back last March, the reference cards were known to have some thermal issues and keeping cool due to the 3 billion transistors that had been embedded onto the GF100 GPU's. This is where KFA2 have stepped upto the challenge to not only overcome the cooling but to also cool a card that they will supply overclocked as standard. This challenge is right up their street!Specifications[HR][/HR]The full specifications of the GTX 470 from KFA2 are as listed below: Detailed SpecificationGeForce GTX 470 1280MB EX OC GDDR5 PCIe 2.0Cores448Graphics Clock(MHz)625Processor Clock(MHz)1250Memory Clock(MHz)1674Memory Amount1280MBMemory Interface320-bit GDDR5Memory Bandwidth(GB/Sec)133.9Texture Fill Rate(Billion/Sec)34.0Further Information:Warranty : 2 YearsNVIDIA PhysX TechnologyDirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL SupportNVIDIA SLI ReadyPackagingOn first seeing the box and indeed all around it, we don't get any insight into the physical design of the card, but on the front we do see the very bold KFA2 branding and model of the card shown. Along the base, a few key specifications are printed for an brief insight to what the card has to offer. The left-hand side of the box details the output configuration for the card along with some of NVidia's product logos for SLI, GeForce and PhysX. The other end of the box gives us a list of key specifications and minimum system requirements needed in order to run this card. The back of the box is jam packed full of selling points including 8 Reasons why you should have a graphics card'. On the base of the bow (upside down text in this picture) is a product brief about the GTX 470 detailing how it was built ground up for the next generation of DX11 gaming. Included with this card are as expected, a few cables, adapters and bits of paperwork. These include:User manualInstallation and maintenance guideDriver installation disc (although newer drivers are available from NVidia direct which super-seed these)DVI-VGA adaptorTwin molex to PCI-e power adaptorMini-HDMI to HDMI cable A Closer LookOn a first look of the card, its design is a little different to the more commonly seen black plastic cover with a sticker or two placed on the top. This card features a light grey cover that is moulded to give a more industrial' look and rather than having a huge sticker placed over the top, there is only one small sticker which is only there to add to the design. All the branding and other writing is printed straight onto the cover itself. In comparison to a reference card, this has as mentioned a better heatpipe cooler design and its slightly smaller in length as well. The back of the card which in most setups will be facing up, is a nice deep aqua colour. This compliments the blue led fan on the other side and would not look out of place in a case with a blue coloured theme to it. One of the unique features of KFA's card is that the fan can be unclipped and moved out from its housing in order to keep it nice and clean. There are two clips on the outside edge that you squeeze together and the fan housing is then hinged on the inner edge. The GTX 470 comes with two SLI connections allowing for a 2, 3 or 4 way SLI setup. On the end of the card, there are 2 6-pin PCI-E power connections. On the top of the card (just out of shot) there is some text to remind us that a minimum of a 550W PSU is required. As is standard with most NVidia cards of today, there are two DVI connections and also one Mini-HDMI port that also includes 7.1 audio throughput for your speakers. These are all lined up for the first of the two expansion ports and the second slot is taken up by the grill through which heat is expelled from the card. Test SetupAs with all our graphics card tests, we use a number of benchmarking utilities and programs to squeeze out every last frame possible from the card whilst placing it under immense pressure. We do this in our separate testing rig as detailed below which supports AMD and Nvidia cards (although not SLI) to give the fairest test possible. Test SystemProcessor (CPU)AMD Phenom II X6 1090TMotherboardAsus Crosshair IV FormulaMemory (RAM)4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1800MHz Graphics CardKFA2 GeForce GTX 470Primary Hard DriveKingston V+ Series 64GB SSD x 2 (Raid 0)Power SupplyBFG EX Series 1200wattOperating SystemWindows 7 Professional 64-bit3DMark 11 3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. Unigine Heaven 2.1 Heaven 2.1 is regarded to be one of the most intensive Benchmarking utilities about at the moment along with the likes of 3DMark. It makes use of highly comprehensive tessellation technology, advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion) and a highly defined light algorithm to produce ever changing light conditions amongst other items. Crysis Warhead The Crysis Warhead Benchmark is a good test of a cards ability to render explosions, fire and fast moving objects on screen. A good card will produce images with good depth of colour, smooth rendering and extra fine detail in the game terrain. Unlike Unigine however, this is a DX10 benchmark, but is still a good test of a cards capabilities. Dirt 2 The physics engine from within Dirt 2 is a good test of a card and it's rendering capabilities with fine details such as dust trailing from the rear of the car. There is also the aspect of light and reflections from the cars bodywork and the ability to work with the in game physics and damage rendering engines to produce a realistic gaming experience. Mafia II Mafia II is an older game and therefore it does have older graphics engines, however this is is still a good all-round in game benchmark that combines the terrain and explosion rendering of Crysis with the dust and dirt particle rendering test of Dirt 2. It also takes into account the changing light conditions albeit not in quite the same detail as the others, but none-the-less still proves a cards capabilities on slightly older games. Final Thoughts For a mid-range card the GTX 470 is a fantastic piece of hardware, and given its price point, is fantastic value for money given that its only a short fall behind the 6950 from AMD. Some tests did favour more towards the POV GTX 460 Beast which is the model below this offering from KFA2, but like this card, the POV 460 Beast is overclocked as standard. When we take into consideration the power that two 460s OC give in SLI, I'm sure that putting two of these together would certainly make up for the difference in percentage gains.I personally really like the design of the card. It's different to the normal black plastic cover with a sticker on that we normally see and the slightly industrial' look along with the blue led fan would look fantastic in a case that has a clear side window.Pros: Full DX11 supportWell known manufacturerUK based support & backing from KFA's parent company GalaxyDetachable fan to allow for easy cleaning and maintenanceOverclocked as standardNon-reference designCons:GTX 460 has more headroom for overclockingNo Display Port or mini-DP connections meaning only a maximum of a 3 way monitor setup on a single card.Ratings: Design: 9Features: 8Performance: 8Value: 7 Attached files 1.jpg (56.5 KB) 1.jpg (50 KB) 1.jpg (92.5 KB) 10.jpg (90.1 KB) 11.jpg (97 KB) 12.jpg (50.3 KB) 2.jpg (86.4 KB) 2.jpg (72.2 KB) 2.jpg (82.4 KB) 3.jpg (75.8 KB) 3.jpg (32.4 KB) 3.jpg (62.9 KB) 3dmark11.jpg (20.3 KB) 4.jpg (67.2 KB) 4.jpg (86.9 KB) 4.jpg (71.4 KB) 5.jpg (73.4 KB) 5.jpg (88.3 KB) 5.jpg (68.1 KB) 6.jpg (72.3 KB) 8.jpg (88.6 KB) batman-arkham-asylum.jpg (49.4 KB) crysis-warhead.jpg (52.7 KB) dirt2.jpg (35.1 KB) heaven.jpg (49.3 KB) just-cause-2.jpg (43.3 KB) mafia-2.jpg (42.2 KB) metro-2033.jpg (56.4 KB) silver.jpg (12.4 KB)

Test System
Processor (CPU)	AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Motherboard	Asus Crosshair IV Formula
Memory (RAM)	4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1800MHz
Graphics Card	KFA2 GeForce GTX 470
Primary Hard Drive	Kingston V+ Series 64GB SSD x 2 (Raid 0)
Power Supply	BFG EX Series 1200watt
Operating System	Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

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