Gainward's GTX 570 Goes Like Hell Edition, fast, but costly

Gainward may not have reached the same household name status like EVGA et al, but this shouldn't detract from the companies long history of producing GPUs. Gainward have been manufacturing GPUs for a whopping 27 years, many of which have been Nvidia based. Given this, you'd expect that they've got the process down pat.  With one of their trademark 'Golden Sample' cards in our clutches, and the slang inspired title 'Goes Like Hell', we aim to see just how fast 'hell' really is.

For the uninitiated, Golden Sample cards boast chips that have been factory overclocked and tested to boost performance out of the box. In this case we're treated with a modest 68MHz boost on the core, and 50MHz on the memory. These cards are thought to be binned higher to ensure greater stability at higher clocks, with lower voltages.

The cooler is a custom dual-slot dual-fan design which is welcome on an overclocked card where temperatures quickly become unwieldy, and traditional fans get insanely loud. The dual fans are PWM controlled and reasonably silent from a short distance (at least, when idle). When we ramped up the card in OCCT, we experienced some aggression in the form of plenty of noise, but the temperatures remained safe.

Overclocking went without a hitch. Afterburner played nice with the card (we love it when that happens), so there was no need to go digging online for obscure tweaking tools. Since we were feeling particularly lucky, we set the core clock rate to 950MHz and the voltage to the maximum allowable 1.1v. It turns out we were a little too ambitious, as indicated by Windows informing us that Nvidia's drivers had crashed, and were restarted for our convenience.

We toned down the clock rate to 925MHz and retested. Although we were able to run though Lost Planet 2 without artifacting or crashes, OCCT told another tale with white spots popping up all over the screen within seconds. It wasn't until we lowered the clock rate to 900MHz that the instability issues passed, and we were able to run OCCT for  30 minutes without error. We also managed to successfully boost the memory clock to 1050MHz.

Judging by the rapid whir of the fans, we think it's be safe to say that if the GTX 570 wasn't 'going like hell' when we first installed it, it sure as heck was doing so now! With the fans set to auto and OCCT churning through a full screen stress test, we measured 81c and 74.5dB. It even blocked out the noisy clattering of mechanical keyboards in the next room (trust us when we say that's no mean feat!)

A custom card need not have custom ports. The standard GTX 570 connectivity applies here, which includes a HDMI, DisplayPort and two DVI-D ports. A DVI to VGA connector is included if you're still sporting an archaic monitor, and if your PSU is lacking sufficient power connections, a molex to 6-pin power connector is provided too.

We're quite happy with the performance of this card. The 13% overclock above the factory overclock gives a welcome boost to performance, lessening the gap between it and the GTX 580 cards a tier above it. The Gainward GTX 570 GLH edition card demands a $50 premium over a standard GTX 570, which would be a fair ask for a card which offers an effective revamped cooling system, but this same cooler is available on their cheaper cards, so it's a matter of weighing up whether $50 is worth a factory overclock (and the possible prospect of having a higher binned chip). For most people, we suspect that this isn't going to cut it.

Despite the price premium, the card sits well below the cost of the GTX 580, and can definitely hold its own when it comes to pushing out frames.

Gainward GTX570 GLH Edition

Reference (XFX HD5850):