Gigabyte has just unveiled a new ‘Prestige’ series that “merges top-tier performance with unparalleled design” to create what will no doubt end up being some of the most expensive components in their class. Along with a striking white and gold look – that includes real gold-plated parts – the new graphics card of the range will also include the highest GPU clock speed of any Nvidia RTX 4080 Super.
While the new Z790 Aorus Xtreme X Ice motherboard and Aorus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Xtreme Ice 16G GPU aren’t all that likely to earn a spot on our best motherboard and best graphics card guides, due to their expected high price, we can certainly take a moment to admire these new Gigabyte designs.
We first saw a glimpse of these two new products when they were leaked by a Gigabyte employee on Facebook. The gold Gigabyte motherboard particularly caught our eye from that reveal, but now that we have official specs for the components, it’s the graphics card that’s taken our interest.
In addition to its unique design, which we’ll look at in more detail in a moment, this graphics card also has the highest clock speed of any RTX 4080 Super. Specifically, it hits 2,700MHz whereas the highest most competing cards rise to is 2,670MHz. Of course, a 1% increase isn’t really going to revolutionize your gameplay but it’s nice to have. Plus, compared to the default clock speed of those cards, which is 2,550MHz, it makes for a larger 6% increase.
Elsewhere, the card features a colossal cooler that rises to a mind-boggling height of 167mm – that’s 47mm higher than a standard mounting PCIe bracket. The Asus TUF Gaming RTX 4080 Super, for instance, rises to just 145mm, and that’s already a huge card. The new Gigabyte card is also 20mm longer and a few millimeters wider, though both cards are triple-slot-filling designs.
Making full use of all this space, the card has a triple-fan cooler – with RGB of course – with each fan measuring 110mm. The cooler also incorporates a vapor chamber and 12 heatpipes. The fans also include shark dermal denticle-mimicking bumps to aid airflow.
The most prominent design details, other than the mostly white finish are the crystalized titanium on its top edge, which is a pattern created by forging titanium to create a glistening multifaceted look. Alongside this is a small LCD panel that can show GPU temp and various other statuses or your choice of image.
The card also gets a real (99% pure) gold serial number on its corner. The other striking detail is an iridescent eagle motif that Gigabyte describes as “combining color and detail, each angle reflects a different color story.”
Other than all that, it’s just a standard RTX 4080 Super, which we’ve already established is our favorite GPU for under $1,000, although we suspect this variant will cost quite a bit more than usual. You can read up on the full specs of the new card here.
As for the motherboard, this features the same core design elements as the GPU, with a large LCD panel covering the VRM and I/O section, a gold serial number next to the power connector, and a huge cover for the bottom section of the motherboard that incorporates the iridescent and titanium design elements. Oh, and also the Intel LGA1700 CPU socket is gold plated!
A slightly confusing addition is a frosted panel that covers the CPU socket and RAM. It’s not entirely clear how this integrates with a CPU cooler but it does look neat. There’s also a ridiculously huge heat pipe radiator for one of the M.2 SSD slots.
As outlandish as these designs are, I actually quite like them, at least based on how they look in the rendered images show here. It’s just a shame they’re only available in a limited run and no doubt for a very high price – Gigabyte hasn’t revealed how many will be made, where they’ll be available, or how much they’ll cost yet.
For a reminder of just how excellent a normal RTX 4080 Super is, check out our RTX 4080 Super review, where we put the Founders Edition and Asus TUF cards to the test.