Today we shall review a couple of GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards from Gigabyte and Leadtek. Actually these two cards copy the reference product, they just come with custom stickers, bundles and boxes.
As you may already know, GeForce GTX 480 is very powerful in terms of DirectX 11 (especially tesselation). It considerably outperforms rivals based on ATI GPUs. However, that only shows in special benchmarks that use tesselation to the max. In real games that use tesselation to a smaller extent, the performance difference becomes moderate. In DX10-based and older games, NVIDIA's novelty even loses from time to time.
Another peculiarity (or rather a drawback) of the new solution is high power consumption -- 300W and more. As a result, its cooler is quite noisy under load. Chances are NVIDIA partners will succeed in designing a more efficient and quieter cooling system. But all we have today is copies of the reference product.
Design
| Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (GV-N480D5-15I-B) |
- GPU: GeForce GTX 480 (GF100)
- Interface: PCIe x16
- GPU frequencies (ROPs/shaders): 700/1400 MHz (standard)
- Memory frequencies (physical (effective)): 925 (3700) MHz (standard)
- Memory bus: 384-bit
- Vertex processors: -
- Pixel processors: -
- Unified processors: 480
- TMUs: 60 (BLF/TLF/ANIS)
- ROPs: 48
- Dimensions: 270x100x33mm
- PCB color: black
- RAMDACs/TDMS: integrated into GPU
- Outputs: 2 x DVI (Dual-Link/HDMI), mini-HDMI
- VIVO: -
- TV-out: -
- Multi-GPU operation: Hardware SLI
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| Leadtek GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (WinFast GTX 480) |
- GPU: GeForce GTX 480 (GF100)
- Interface: PCIe x16
- GPU frequencies (ROPs/shaders): 700/1400 MHz (standard)
- Memory frequencies (physical (effective)): 925 (3700) MHz (standard)
- Memory bus: 384-bit
- Vertex processors: -
- Pixel processors: -
- Unified processors: 480
- TMUs: 60 (BLF/TLF/ANIS)
- ROPs: 48
- Dimensions: 270x100x33mm
- PCB color: black
- RAMDACs/TDMS: integrated into GPU
- Outputs: 2 x DVI (Dual-Link/HDMI), mini-HDMI
- VIVO: -
- TV-out: -
- Multi-GPU operation: Hardware SLI
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Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (GV-N480D5-15I-B)
Leadtek GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (WinFast GTX 480) |
| 1536MB GDDR5 SDRAM in 12 Hynix memory chips on the front side of the PCB. Peak clock rate 1000 (4000) MHz. |
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| Comparison with the reference design, front view |
| Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (GV-N480D5-15I-B) |
Reference card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 |
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| Leadtek GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (WinFast GTX 480) |
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| Comparison with the reference design, rear view |
| Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (GV-N480D5-15I-B) |
Reference card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 |
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| Leadtek GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (WinFast GTX 480) |
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GeForce GTX 480 doesn't have a TV-Out. This interface becomes obsolete, because HDMI is expected to replace old analog connectors.
This graphics card has its own audio codec and can transmit both video and audio via HDMI.
Note that GeForce GTX 480 has two connectors for external power supply: one 8-pin and one 6-pin. The latter are quite popular, but the former may require an adapter.
Also note that, working in SLI, this graphics card can output video signal to three monitors simultaneously.
Maximum resolutions and frequencies:
- 240 Hz maximum refresh rate
- 2048 x 1536 x 32bit @ 85Hz Max -- analog interface
- 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz Max -- digital interface (Dual-Link DVI/HDMI)
As for the HDTV support, a review is available here.
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i3DSpeed, August 2010 Replaced GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 with GeForce GT 240 GDDR3, because the latter is much more widespread.
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