I know it's clocked a hair lower with no back plate, but the pcb looks the same, as far as I can tell from the back. I didn't even know Gigabyte had this card out. I was at Fry's after an MSI card, but this card caught my eye with the rebate and already nice $499 price tag. I grabbed it and was off! I thought it was the G1 Gaming though, lol.
I like the card a lot, so far, though. It clocks to about 1530 stable. I game at 1501 and it really doesn't break a sweat.
It has an ASIC score of 83.5% and I never see the tdp get over 90%. I know it's not a golden chip, but it's very solid and I'm happy with my purchase.
I'm just sorta curious on the differences between the two exactly.
