Gigabyte has announced its new Super Overclock series of graphics cards that will consist of solely of GPUs that have been cherry-picked for top performance, efficiency and reliability.

In order to assure only the best GPUs are used in the new series of cards, Gigabyte has developed a proprietary GPU Gauntlet sorting process that consists of a testing toolkit that allows it to inspect and select the GPUs with the highest frequency; the program runs for 30 minutes and provides important data on the maximum overclocking ability compared to a stock GPU. Once the Super OC point has been determined, the company's engineers will boost the frequency to offer the highest factory default clock setting in the market.

Each GPU is also tested under extreme graphics load and as well as for power switching and stability with only the GPUs with the best power efficiency and lowest power consumption qualifing for the Super Overclock Series.

The first card in the series with be the GV-N26SO-896I, a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 GPU, with a core clock of 680MHz compared to the standard 576MHz reference design; the shader clock is upped to 1466MHz (standard 1242MHz) with a memory clock speed of 2350MHz (standard 1998MHz). Gigabyte claims the Super Overclock version offers 25% better performance than the a GTX 260 and 3% better performance than a generic GTX 275 card.

Full specifications can be found on the GV-N26SO-896I product page; the card should launch in early September but there is no pricing information available yet.