Gigabyte is the first company to make a Mini-ITX variant of a GTX 970, and it looks very well made.
So what did Gigabyte sacrifice to make this happen? The truth is, not a whole lot. Presumably, the VRM circuitry isn't as elaborate, and the cooler certainly isn't either, but the card is still overclocked, running at 1076 MHz Base with a Boost clock of 1216 MHz. Reference GTX 970's run at 1051 MHz and Boost at 1178 MHz. It's not much of an overclock, but it's enough to show that Gigabyte has faith in its design. It is powered by a single 8-pin PCI-Express power connector.
So, a card like this is going to be expensive, right? Wrong. Gigabyte has priced the card at $329.99, which is Nvidia's reference MSRP pricing, and a damn good deal for what is now the most powerful Mini-ITX card to date. Shipments should arrive starting early November.
