Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum Edition

Palit has made a name for themselves in the graphics card business by offering competitively priced cards which became really popular when AMD (ATI back then) announced their 4000 series (HD 4850 and HD 4870). It’s been a long time since we’ve reviewed a Palit graphics card which could be attributed to the fact that about a year back, many consumers reported issues about the cards developing problems after a few months’ usage. This was later confirmed by a couple of retailers in Lamington road, as well. It’s almost been a year now, hopefully, Palit has taken this time to sort out their issues as it would be a real shame to lose a good brand. They’ve sent us their GTX 570 Sonic Platinum Edition for review and from the looks of it, it will go head-to-head with Asus’s GTX 570 Direct CU II that we reviewed a few weeks back. 

Design and Features

Two fans for twice the cooling

Palit has gone with their own custom cooler design which makes it a little longer than the reference 10.5-inches. As this is the Sonic Platinum edition, the core and memory are both overclocked by about 10 per cent. The core speed is bumped up from 732MHz to 800MHz while the 1.28GB is set at 4000MHz (effective speed) from the stock 3800MHz (effective speed). Palit has used a rather flimsy looking gray plastic cover for the heatsink. Within that, we have two fans for cooling the card. The base of the heatsink is copper and so are the two heatpipes for each of the cores. The heatpipes terminate into a bunch of aluminum fins which are then cooled by the fans. 

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Connectivities galore

For connectivity, we have two dual-link DVI ports, HDMI and DisplayPort. There’s even a little vent above for dispensing the hot air. The rear of the card doesn’t have any back-plate and is left exposed. To power the card, you’ll need two 6-pin connectors along with a good 550W power supply.

Test Rig Specifications

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz

Motherboard: GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R

Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 6 GB DDR3 (3 x 2 GB)

Hard drive: WD Velociraptor  300 GB

GPU: Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum 

PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000W

Driver Version : 275.33

Performance 

Palit’s overclocked card wastes no time in showing what it can do. From our first synthetic test itself, it leaves the Asus GTX 570 in the dust. Now the Palit card is clocked at a higher frequency as compared to Asus, and you could probably achieve that with the Asus as well but only as far as out-of-the-box performance goes, the Sonic Platinum edition is a lot faster. Even in real world games like Mafia II, Just Cause 2 and Crysis 2, we see a jump of 15-17 per cent which is great. The card also performs really well in the DX11 benchmark of Heaven.  

Temperature and Noise 

For gauging the temperature of the graphics card, we used FurMark 1.8.2 to stress the card. 

IDLE: 48C 

LOAD: 78C

The temperatures are well within the prescribed range thanks to Palit’s extravagant cooling solution. During gaming, the fans can get a little noisy as they spin faster in order to keep the temperatures down. 

Verdict

Good performance out-of-the-box

Palit has complemented the good performance with good pricing. While the MRP may read Rs. 32,300, the street price for the GTX 570 Sonic Platinum edition is closer to Rs. 24,750. The Asus ENGTX 570 Direct CU II faces stiff competition from Palit and between the two cards, it’s a toss up. If you want the best out-of-the-box performance and don’t care about overclocking the card yourself, then I’d recommend the Palit GTX 570. On the other hand, if you like to tinker around with the card yourself then I’d undoubtedly suggest the Asus ENGTX 570 Direct CU II. Backed up by a great overclocking software and quality components, not to mention the brand name, Asus’s version of the GTX 570 is best suited for enthusiasts and overclockers alike.