Article by Kevin Lee

Gigabyte has produced the first miniaturized Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Graphics Card made for Mini-ITX computers, and it really is a precious little thing. Don’t let this mini-GPU’s cuteness deceive you, though: it’s still packing a lot of power.

The card comes overclocked and running at 1076 MHz base clock speed, which can be further boosted to 1216 MHz. 1076 MHz is actually slightly faster than the 1051 base speed of the reference GTX 970, but keep in mind that full-size cards like Gigabyte’s GTX 970 G1 Gaming can overclock as high as the 1500 MHz mark. The full-size card draws power from two 6-pin connectors; Gigabyte’s Mini-ITX 970 requires a single 8-pin power connector.

Gigabyte has swapped out the reference cooler for its own WindForce 3X cooler. Despite the name, the cooler only has a single fan. According to Gigabyte, the massive heatsink and three heat pipes were still able to keep the Mini-ITX GTX 970 at a cool 62-degrees Celsius while running the Metro Last Light benchmark test. Gigabyte claimed a reference card equipped with a NVTTM cooler running the same benchmark topped out at a much hotter 76 degrees Celsius.

Now the most interesting bit: Gigabyte is selling its Mini-ITX GTX 970 for $329.99, which happens to be Nvidia’s reference pricing for the standard GTX 970. You’re not going to get the same overclocking or cooling potential out of the mini-ITX 970 as you would a full-size card, but for a mini-ITX system, it’s packing a hell of a lot of power into a smaller form factor.