NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 GF100 DX11 Video Card Review

[shaxs]

Seems like for the features, performance, and price ATI is still the way to go.

[stmok]

So its really a high powered GPGPU shoehorned into the video card role?
(Its pretty obvious that its going to kick ass in CUDA based applications.)

Nvidia pushed the limits of the engineering required to manufacture this GPU...And they paid for it in heat, power consumption, and thus, noise. This caused them to miss their original design goal (480 cores instead of the original planned 512).

We won't see its 512 incarnation until they introduce a new die-shrunk "refreshed" version (GTX485?)

The hardest part to swallow with this product is the temps in an enclosed case scenario and the new PSU you may need to invest in. (Assuming your existing one is insufficient.)

This just reminds me of the German Tiger tanks of WWII...They were seriously armored and their firepower was unmatched. The problem was; their tracks wore out pretty quickly, and their transmission died more often because it had to move all that weight around. (A good number of them failed because of mechanical issues; not due to enemy fire.)

Getting pack to the Nvidia product; it really feels like they intentionally pushed this to its limits because they had to beat the Radeon HD 5870. (As their CEO pretty much hyped on it...Even with mock-up cards with wood screws.)

Even if I had the money for one of these cards, I would consider waiting for 2nd generation.

[Apoptosis]

Just wanted to let everyone know I made some updates to the article...

- Changed the GPU-Z 0.3.9 screen shots on the test setup page to GPU-Z 0.4.0.
- Added Heaven 2.0 Benchmark Results on page 9 with all the settings cranked to the hilt - http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/9/

The Heaven 2.0 benchmark with extreme tessellation was interesting to run as it showed the GeForce GTX 480 stomping the ATI Radeon HD 5970 by 25%! In Heaven 1.0 with medium settings the ATI Radeon HD 5970 was ~33% faster, so this new benchmark revered the roles!

[hark]

Wow. So the GTX 480 excels at extreme amounts of tessellation. I wonder how much this will matter in upcoming DirectX 11 games.

[djpinc19]

i have a feeling AMD will just roll out another 5000 with the same power and thermal specs as GTX 480. 95 C full load will be very interesting

[Mike89]

Damn, with the 480 thermals, my GTX 280 is like air conditioning!

Seriously I bet a computer with the 480 would heat up a small room a good amount all by itself (and the sound would give the room a nice jet engine feel). All you'd need is a set of goggles, a scent of fuel and you're all set!

[Dizz01]

So it's extremely hot, noisey and power hungry as hell. For how much an increase on average against a 5870? 14% or so? What a waste, wonder what the lifespan on one of these cards is. I guess the only way to really game/design with these cards and not just Benchmark for Epeen is to get watercooling set up. Even then tho... What a disappointment Nvidia. I was tempted to go BACK to you as well. If you guys release bad drivers again how long would it take for this card to burn itself out?

2 Monitors 90c+???? Are you freaking joking!?

I'll stick with AMD/ATI

It'll be interesting when ATI actually get drivers out that take full advantage of their Stream Processing Units

[Lt Ohio]

Man that's kinda disappointing, i was hoping Nvidia would bring something worth getting but with that amount of power consumption your spending more $$$ on a new power supply. I hope they fix these issues and not add on a new price tag for it... unless ofcourse the price goes down.

[Illuminati]

Seriously I bet a computer with the 480 would heat up a small room a good amount all by itself (and the sound would give the room a nice jet engine feel). All you'd need is a set of goggles, a scent of fuel and you're all set!

Hehe... like any product fault - someone can put a spin on it and call it a feature... lol So if I'm playing HAWX, it gives me a more realistic feel that I'm flying a jet by adding extra sensory effects ... lol

[jnanster]

If you factor in heat and power consumption, it is as if this new card has done nothing…i.e., more speed thru a super duper heat sink and more power.
Great review though, really spells it out.
The card seems too max’ed out though.
A long wait for not much.

[FeRaL]

Wow, this card really did not live up to Jen-Hsun Huang's hype. I had expected better but then again there were the rumors about the heat issues way in advance.

[gwolfman]

... I talked to a few site owners and I know Tech Report, Techgage and others are waiting till Monday I think as they felt rushed and wanting to post it on a bigger traffic day as 7PM EST on a Friday night is usually a dead time on tech sites. I know it is on LR as most are our or playing games and not reading reviews.

I don't know about you, but I was waiting from 5:50 till 6:20 hitting the refresh button on LR and didn't see the review posted yet. I understand that it was nVidia's fault though, but I was anxiously waiting.

[crowTrobot]

Thanks for testing dual monitors as well. People think the high load temps is bad, check out the idle temps on dual monitors!
I wonder when they are going to get that fixed via drivers.

[Apoptosis]

I wonder when they are going to get that fixed via drivers.

Something I've been working on the past several day ;) Expect an update soon.

[thehybridfrog]

I think pretty much 480 by itself is ok, not great, but SLI480 is another story. Toward that end, will you guys be doing a surround (3x1) review? I think a lot of people would be interested in that.

[crowTrobot]

I wonder when they are going to get that fixed via drivers.

Something I've been working on the past several day ;) Expect an update soon.

sweet! Thanks.

I heard a lot of the pre-orders are already sold out. I'm still not sure if I should get one. I am really tempted because of the 1.5 to 2x 3D vision improvement I've seen but the temps are definitely scary. They might lose some end users with this one, but with Fermi's C++ support, I don't think they are going to lose any developer support.

[spitter]

Sorry had to!!!

[Apoptosis]

Sorry had to!!!

Already beat you to it in this thread - about26838.html

[Jugin]

Coool one)) ant food looks very tasty... would like to have one. but i'm not convinced about the size.. it seems a bit large