It's happened! Get your wallets out! Gigabyte have decided that they would like to be the first to introduce a new form factor to their range of Nvidia GTX 970 GPU's. This particular form is probably more suited to those with HTPCs/M-ITX systems who perhaps struggle for space but don't really want to give up the performance that high-end cards offer.
Yes, we all know the GTX 970 is an amazing card. It comes at a great price, there's already many partner cards available with great cooling solutions. However, this is definitely the first Mini version of the 970. We saw that MSI and ASUS produced similar offerings with their smaller versions of the GTX 760. The performance was almost the same as the standard size 760 which shows that manufacturers are able to do it quite well.
How cute!
The card is running at 1076 MHz Base with a Boost clock of 1216 MHz, which is actually a tiny bit faster than the reference cards. The card has a single 8-pin PCI-Express power connector. The cooler on the card is similar to the WindForce 3X design but obviously just has one fan. It comes with a "Triangle Cool" design to guide the air for more effective cooling. Heat is transferred to this fin array through two 8 mm heatpipes and one 5 mm heatpipe.
Naked copper heatpipes may not be to everyone's taste
Gigabyte are also claiming that the card runs at roughly 62 degrees Celsius while running the 'Metro Last Night' benchmark. If these numbers are true, then that's quite impressive, given the size of the cooler. The whole card is 17cm long and still a dual slot solution. The Mini 970 also keeps the same number of outputs as it's larger comrades: two DVI ports, three DisplayPort interfaces, and a HDMI port.
Definitely not Corsair RAM...
Gigabyte has said the card should be available for $329.99. I imagine that, in the UK, that will equate to around £260, maybe even closer to £250, but that is optimistic. I am actually quite glad that this has been released. I personally have a Corsair 250D and a lot of the 970 aftermarket coolers are either too long or too high, leaving me with opting for something from EVGA. With the recent mis-aligned heatpipe issue, that means I'd probably have opted for the louder 'FTW' edition. Now I have at least one more option! Who knows, maybe others will follow suit? The 970 certainly seems like the power and thermal friendly card that would allow smaller sized cards. I imagine that, for a lot of people, their M-ITX machine might not be their main PC. Is this something that would still appeal to that type of user?
Yes, we all know the GTX 970 is an amazing card. It comes at a great price, there's already many partner cards available with great cooling solutions. However, this is definitely the first Mini version of the 970. We saw that MSI and ASUS produced similar offerings with their smaller versions of the GTX 760. The performance was almost the same as the standard size 760 which shows that manufacturers are able to do it quite well.

How cute!
The card is running at 1076 MHz Base with a Boost clock of 1216 MHz, which is actually a tiny bit faster than the reference cards. The card has a single 8-pin PCI-Express power connector. The cooler on the card is similar to the WindForce 3X design but obviously just has one fan. It comes with a "Triangle Cool" design to guide the air for more effective cooling. Heat is transferred to this fin array through two 8 mm heatpipes and one 5 mm heatpipe.

Naked copper heatpipes may not be to everyone's taste
Gigabyte are also claiming that the card runs at roughly 62 degrees Celsius while running the 'Metro Last Night' benchmark. If these numbers are true, then that's quite impressive, given the size of the cooler. The whole card is 17cm long and still a dual slot solution. The Mini 970 also keeps the same number of outputs as it's larger comrades: two DVI ports, three DisplayPort interfaces, and a HDMI port.

Definitely not Corsair RAM...
Gigabyte has said the card should be available for $329.99. I imagine that, in the UK, that will equate to around £260, maybe even closer to £250, but that is optimistic. I am actually quite glad that this has been released. I personally have a Corsair 250D and a lot of the 970 aftermarket coolers are either too long or too high, leaving me with opting for something from EVGA. With the recent mis-aligned heatpipe issue, that means I'd probably have opted for the louder 'FTW' edition. Now I have at least one more option! Who knows, maybe others will follow suit? The 970 certainly seems like the power and thermal friendly card that would allow smaller sized cards. I imagine that, for a lot of people, their M-ITX machine might not be their main PC. Is this something that would still appeal to that type of user?
Last edited: