Gigabyte introduced its fastest graphics card based on the AMD Radeon HD 6870 GPU, bearing the SuperOverclock (SOC) badge. SOC graphics cards make use of top quality components and a copper-rich PCB as prescribed by the company's own Ultra Durable VGA+ specifications, and use high-end cooling. The GV-R687SO-1GD, as it's formally known, carries clock speeds of 950/1150 (core/memory), against reference speeds of 900/1050 MHz. The card uses a 10-inch long PCB that uses a stronger VRM to leave room for some overclocking. The GPU itself is hand-picked by performance binning.
The card is cooled by Gigabyte's WindForce 3X GPU cooler, which makes use of a large aluminum fin array to which heat is conveyed by copper heat pipes, ventilated by three 80 mm fans. As with every other HD 6870, there are 1120 stream processors 1 GB of 256-bit GDDR5 memory, and display connectivity that includes two each of DVI and mini-DP, and one HDMI. Gigabyte's HD 6870 SOC is expected to be priced closer to the $250 mark.
