Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 275 Review

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While the massive GPU cooler is admittedly impressive, cooling the card’s memory seems to have been all but forgotten in a somewhat disappointing oversight. Beneath the massive expanse of copper heatpipe and aluminium cooling fins the 896MB of Hynix GDDR3 is left bare, only cooled by the second hand airflow from the 92mm cooling fans above, an omission that is sure to reduce the overclocking headroom of the card’s memory.

Thankfully though the card’s power circuitry and I/O chip have not been similarly ignored, and both sport low profile aluminium heatsinks to squeeze beneath the enormous bulk of the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme above.

While the cooling on the Inno3D iChil GTX 275 has been massively upgraded, it’s physically the only change that’s been made to the card. Elsewhere everything is very much a stock GTX 275; there’s the exact same GT200 GPU with 216 stream processors, the same 448-bit memory bus and the same 896MB of GDDR3. Unlike the Palit GTX 275, there’s been no optimisations to the power circuitry or replacement/removal of capacitors or resistors, which should mean that the Inno3D iChill GTX 275 should prove to be just as capable, if not more so, than a stock GTX 275 when it comes to overclocking.


However, as capable as we hope the card is at overclocking, Inno3D have chosen to stretch the card’s performance a little out of the box, with a factory overclock of 670MHz core, 1474Mhz shader and 1175Mhz (2350MHz effective) on the memory, increases of six percent, five percent and four percent respectively. While these overclocks are far from earth shattering (and questionably cautious considering the much upgraded cooling) they’re sure to offer a minor boost in benchmarks over a stock GTX 275, although we’re not expecting anything too surprising here.


Included with the card in the box is a reasonable hardware bundle, with a single dual molex to 6-pin PCI-E cable, S-video to composite and S-Video to component cables and a DVI to VGA adapter, as well as a full copy of the excellent Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, although a DVI to HDMI and internal two-pin S/PDIF cable are both conspicuous by their unfortunate absence.

Warranty:

Normally, Inno3D offers a two year parts and labour warranty with its graphics cards. However, it has extended the warranty on its iChiLL range to three years – this is great to see, and it should help Innovision to differentiate itself from the pack a little. During the first year, you should contact your retailer, and after that you should communicate directly with Inno3D’s support team. This is certainly a better warranty than bargain bucket board partners, but is still a little off the ten years/lifetime warranties offered by the likes of BFG and EVGA.