In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 Gigabyte SOC 1.2GB Edition are marginally better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition.

The GTX 470 has a 50 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the GTX 470. This results in the GTX 470 providing 2.8 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 470 has a 50 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 470 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 470 providing 2 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 470 was released less than a year after the GTX 470, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The GeForce GTX 470 Gigabyte SOC 1.2GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The GTX 470 has 2.1 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 470, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 470 is marginally better than the GTX 470.

Both the GeForce GTX 470 Gigabyte SOC 1.2GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition have 448 Shader Processing Units. Having the same number of SPUs and using the same architecture means that the performance they offer can be compared by looking at the memory bandwidth, Texture and Pixel Rates. In this case, the GTX 470 has 2.8 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate and 2 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate, but the GTX 470 has 2.1 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth. Although the GPUs are very similar in performance, the GTX 470 takes the edge.

The GeForce GTX 470 Gigabyte SOC 1.2GB Edition requires 215 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition requires 215 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 470 and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 470. The two GPUs require the same amount of wattage to run. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.