so after many trials and tribulations uh you can actually click here to see how I
got my GeForce gtx480 on launch day I
finally have one today I have the PNY accelerate performance Edition GeForce
gtx480 these cards are rarer than hen
teeth but I did manage to get my hands on one so I'm going to be opening it for
your unboxing pleasure so let's uh start with what's on the outside of the box
first of all down at the bottom you can see that this has 15 36 MB of gddr5
memory this is NVIDIA's first video card with gddr5 on the high end now they
actually have a low-end GPU that uses it but it's not it doesn't make a
difference at that point anyway so this is the fastest memory card from NVIDIA
ever you've got 3D Visions surround so if you actually have two GTX 480s you
can not only run surround with three monitors but you can do it in 3D with
the NVIDIA 3D glasses next we have support for physics and Cuda these are
nothing new but they're still being continued with and OB obviously NVIDIA
SLI support now let's uh oh yeah PNY
also includes five free bonus uh movie downloads from pny.com movies so you
should check that out that's uh something that I don't think anyone else
is offering with their gtx480 on the back we've got the basic specifications
and key features as well as minimum system requirements so there's going to be some interesting stuff in here first
of all specifications can you get a look at that so that people can just read it
and freeze the frame if they want to is that good enough let's just call that
good enough okay key features direct X11 this is NVIDIA's First Direct X11 card
everything else here is pretty much stuff I've already covered at the front
or stuff that's just being carried over from previous cards minimum system
requirements this one's interesting because NVIDIA actually recommends a
minimum 600 watt or greater system power
supply with a minimum 12vt current rating of 42 amps so that means that if
you're running just a a barebone system other than that you will need to have at
least at least 42 amps on your 12vt rail you should be using a modern power
supply with this card if you're not then that's absolutely crazy all right let's
keep on moving and package contents we'll get to that when we
actually open the contents of the package so I am breaking the seal on the
GTX 480 here we go let's peel that back
and there is a paper sleeve oh no hey
check this out high class that is a cardboard sleeve not a paper sleeve
leave you can tell it's a premium card when okay the next thing we find inside
is um a little scrap of paper I'm guessing that's nothing then we have an
installation CD you should download the latest drivers off NVIDIA.com don't even
use this next we have a GeForce graphics
card quick start guide from PNY so um
let's see they're just showing you all the different basic kinds of connectors
that you might find on your video card and they're giving you some instructions
on how to install them in your case all right thank you PNY for covering that
for us next we have a two Molex to one
PCI Express six pin adapter although frankly if you don't have a power supply
that has the required connectors for this then you should just buy one
because you don't want to be you don't want to be running something like this
with a lousy power supply if your power supply blows up it can take a lot of
other stuff with it then we have a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter so uh I'll show you
why you need that in just a second and then one DVI to VGA adapter
all right so let's uh get the foam off here and let's get this baby opened
there we are so the first thing you notice about it is that the whole front
of the card I mean this is not uh shiny
plastic this is metal this is heat sink here guys this is one hot card so that
means that you've got all of this extra surface area that you normally wouldn't
have on a video card dedicated to dissipating heat with any incidental air
flow that comes over the card not only that but compared to ati's radon HD
series which I happen to have one of here you can see that the back panel
uses the full length of the adjacent PCI slot for cooling and ventilation versus
ATI cutting off half of it all right the next thing we've got okay well here I
told you I'd tell you why you need a mini HDMI connector that's why now you
can only actually connect two of these three at a time so each card can output
to two displays but this way you can do HDMI and DVI or DVI and DVI all right
let's go around to why don't we do the top of the card next those are thick heat pipes I have never seen a heat pipe
this thick on a stock cooler for a graphics card not one not two not three
but four heat pipes coming out from right over where the GPU core is so you
can see right here that's where that large GTX 480 chip is and that's where
all of the heat pipes go because really there's nothing else on here except
maybe the voltage regulators and is that wow that's actually stuck on there
bizarre except the voltage Regulators that actually needs a lot of cooling so
let's go around to the bottom of the card this is still a standard PCI
Express 2 card so that means it's going to fit into any PCI Express 1.0 1.1 1.1a
or PCI Express 2.0 uh motherboard around
the back you see we find some of the voltage regulator regulation components
and the rest of them seem to be sitting uh down in see see under the fan right
there so those are actually getting direct air flow right from the fan when
it's spinning NVIDIA is using their uh their standard kind of fan they've been
using since uh wow the 8800 series I
guess they've been using this particular blower fan okay another thing that I
want to point out about this card right off the bat is that this is again in
line with the power requirements it requires not only one PCI Express six
pin connector not an additional PCI Express six pin connector but a six pin
and an 8 Pin PCI Express connector so you need a serious power supply to run
this card and I think that pretty much does it for my un boxing oh you know
what else I should mention PNY has actually just added lifetime warranty to
their uh their tick boxes on the both sides of their cards so the GeForce GTX
470 and 480 from PNY both feature a
lifetime warranty thank you for checking out my unboxing