Gigabyte has made its entry into the Indian market with the launch of the NVIDIA GTX 980 and GTX 970 2 months ago, and on December 17, 2014 they held a press event to announce their future plans for the country. Speaking at the event was Gigabyte’s country head of the Graphics Card Business, Mr. Mayank Sharma who outlined Gigabyte’s serious push a the top end segment with the G1 Gaming series GTX 970 and GTX 980 cards as well as their new Waterforce system.
The Waterforce system was the highlight of the show as it includes 3 GTX 980s in SLI cooled by a closed loop liquid cooling system with radiators and fans all conveniently packaged in a box that can fit above the PC case. The target market of this system is probably enthusiast and corporates who want a hassle free liquid cooling solution and the power of 3 GTX 980s in SLI. DIY enthusiasts will not be very impressed with this system since it takes half the fun out of assembly. The case containing the radiators also has a display and buttons to control fan speed and overclock the GPUs on the fly. The entire kit comes packed in its own suitcase and includes a stand to keep the GPUs in position. Curiously the cards lack a backplate and the box holding the radiators doesn’t have any creative lighting to add to the bling factor.
Also present at the event were Mr. Nino Ferencek, Gigabyte’s regional manager for India Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for the Graphics Card Division and Ms. Gennie Chao, Gigabyte’s marketing manager for the same region. As a surprise, Gigabyte also presented three randomly chosen winners from among those present with their Aivia Uranium Gaming mice.
On display at the event were a G1 Gaming GTX 970 powered rig that also used Gigabyte motherboards and peripherals to run Call of Duty Advanced Warfare on a single monitor. Another Rig with Gigabyte motherboard and peripherals was running the Waterforce system with 3 GTX 980s in SLI mode powering three 27” monitors at a 5760×1080 resolution that was showcasing Far Cry 4 with all its choice expletives and graphical glory. We were surprised by just how many members of the press were struggling to play through the introductory section of the game.
Gigabyte are quite serious about their plans to be a major player in the Indian GPU market and they have certainly picked a good time to enter it. While they are launching with the NVIDIA GTX 970 and GTX 980 cards in both standard and G1 Gaming variants, they do plan to bring in AMD cards in the future. Pictures from the event follow.[divider]
