Board Design

The GV-R9700 PRO is what we like to call a “first generation” RADEON 9700 PRO card. The first generation cards follow ATI’s RADEON 9700 PRO reference design very closely, if it isn’t an outright copy of the same design. Crucial and Powercolor are among the other manufacturers sticking with the first generation RADEON 9700 PRO design for even their newest cards.

The Gigabyte GV-R9700 PRO

The back of the card

For cooling the RADEON 9700 PRO core, Gigabyte has stuck with ATI’s reference heatsink/fan unit, which does a fairly decent job at keeping the VPU cool while at the same time keeping noise levels in check. Gigabyte did go with a gold aluminum heatsink rather than the standard black, we guess they wanted the Maya II card to stand out a little bit more.

For cooling the memory, Gigabyte has implemented small aluminum heatsinks. The strange part however, is that Gigabyte only cools the memory on the front of the card; the chips on the underside of the card aren’t donned with these heatsinks.

Of course, we all know by now that the RADEON 9700 PRO runs fine without these cooling units attached to the memory, but if Gigabyte isn’t going to use them on all of the memory chips, it can be really misleading to consumers (who only see the top of the card in promotional materials). It’s pretty apparent that the heatsinks are there for decorative purposes and while they look nice, Gigabyte probably shouldn’t have gone to the extra expense of adding them.

Other than those minor differences, the GV-R9700 PRO Maya II is identical to ATI’s own RADEON 9700 PRO card. If you’re hesitant to purchase a card that doesn’t come from ATI, you really shouldn’t be concerned with the Gigabyte GV-R9700. Gigabyte’s manufacturing capabilities are first rate; they didn’t become one of the world’s largest motherboard manufacturers producing poor products. And with so much integrated on the RADEON 9700 PRO core itself, there aren’t too many ways board manufacturers can really differentiate themselves. 2D display quality of the GV-R9700 was just as good as the other RADEON 9700 PRO cards we’ve tested.