NVIDIA’s Pascal GPUs have shattered all previous records in overclocking by breaching the 3 GHz barrier at the GALAX GOC 2016 finals in Wuhan, China.
The card to have marked this landmark achievement is (once again) the Galaxy GeForce GTX 1060 HOF. Powered by a Pascal GP106 core, this is the same card that delivered 2.8 GHz on LN2 last month. Overall, the success story of the GTX 1060 HOF stands as a testimony to the overclocking prowess of Pascal’s FinFET node and architectural specifications.
The Galax GTX 1060 HOF GOC carries 6 GB of GDDR5 memory alongside 1280 CUDA cores. The core clock and boost clock are maintained at 1620 MHz and 1847 MHz respectively. It features a 8 + 6 Pin power configuration. Despite having a TDP rating of 120-watt, the hefty PWM and VRMs demand a lot of power to ensure that the GPU remains stable even when at the peak of its overclocking potential.
As for the record-breaking 3GHz+ performance, three different teams were able to achieve it. The chip took only 21.685 seconds to finish GPUPI (10M) calculations, closely followed by the others. Apart from that, it also achieved a texture and pixel fill rate higher than that of the GeForce 1070. In fact, it fared better than even the GTX 1080 when it came to pixel fill rate.
On a related development, GALAX surprised many at the event by announcing a new compact, single-slot GeForce GTX 1070 card. So far we know, the forthcoming card will make use of a metallic shroud with an exposed area right on the surface to reveal the heatsink (entirely made of pure copper). The blower-type cooler is expected to do a pretty neat job in pushing the heat straight out of the vent. Meanwhile, the PCB which is smaller compared to the reference variant will feature an extended shroud cover.
Other key specs include dual SLI connectors, single 8-Pin power connector, single HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort. The card is likely to debut in early 2017 and set back users $379.