Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 1GB OC Graphics Card Review

When I mention the British Phonographic Industry, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Penthouse Magazine? Playboy UK? Well, my advice to you is, let's get your head out of the gutter, because what we are talking about here is the British Phonographic Industry, not the British Pornographic Industry. (On the other hand, it is interesting to point out most people get it wrong at first glance, too.) With that in mind, let me introduce to you the product we are reviewing today. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 1GB OC, as its name suggests, is based off one of NVIDIA's latest GPU releases, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560. Wait a second. Hasn't the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 been around since January? Fair enough, but like when we have mentioned British Phonographic Industry earlier, it is one of those things you can easily misread -- the one you are thinking about is probably the GTX 560 Ti. You know, the Titanium version, with more stream processors and texture units, combined with a marginally higher clock speed. The GV-N56GOC-1GI is based off the non-Ti version with a slight overclock to 830MHz core, 1660MHz shader, and 1002MHz memory; followed by a stream-texture-ROP configuration count of 336-56-32, respectively. Situated in the extremely competitive $200 MSRP market, and priced slightly below that at press time, how well does the usual Gigabyte approach of taking a standard GPU, install it on a custom PCB full of high quality components, slap on a custom cooler on top (Or under, depending on your perspective), fare in this ultra competitive market? Read on to find out what we have found!