fermi is the card that everyone's been talking about for the last couple weeks
and for good reason it's NVIDIA's first directx 11 part now this isn't quite the
one that people are as excited about that's the gtx 480 the higher end one
but today i'm going to be having a look at a zotac gtx 470 so this is a slightly
cut down gtx 480 basically they've knocked down the memory to uh
1280 megabytes and then they've knocked
down the memory interface to 320 bit so that means that it's slightly slower
access to slightly less memory and the clock speeds are down a little bit as
well but it's not all bad news you also save a little bit of money versus a gtx 480.
now something to note about zotac's gtx
470 is that they've extended the warranty in the us and canada they're
actually offering a lifetime warranty on their 470 and 480 parts and they're not
the only vendor to step up and that in that regard with this generation of
cards actually p and y did the same thing so here on the side you can see
we've got some i'm going to just zoom in here so you can see the box a little bit
better we have the included sort of supported software so zotac boost is try
GeForce accelerated software okay including badaboom which is for encoding
video and then be reveal for enhancing videos and a couple other things then
you've got your usual tags from NVIDIA so physics as well as
do around the side you've got sli support pure video hd as well as GeForce
kudo let's go around to the back of the box where it says this thing goes really
fast and then let's go to the side of the box where it says sort of more
detailed information so it gives you the full specs of the card which if i zoom
in just a little tiny bit more you might actually be able to read there you go
and then it also gives you the system requirements and key features and the
system requirements aren't here i'm guessing i'm going around to the other
side of the box for that yay there we go minimum system requirements are right
there so pci express 2.0 compliant motherboard with one dual bit 16x
graphics slot a six pin and one eight
pin pci express connector minimum 550
watt or greater power supply with a minimum 12 volt current rating of 38
amps okay 10 tm it's see this is a weird thing
okay look at this
Intel pentium 4 AMD athlon xp class
processor or higher show me an athlon xp motherboard with a
pci express slot why even bother putting that on the side
of the box it boggles the mind okay so why don't we go ahead i mean everyone
does it i'm not just calling out zotac on this one for some reason everybody
seems to include that particular requirement
athlon xp or better um so
hey i don't have a knife today but what i do have is an NVIDIA pen to break the
seal with so how appropriate is that i'm just going to poke a hole in the tape
here wow that's pretty resilient tape this might be a bit of a problem it's
very strong tape today but that's okay with the power of NVIDIA i can get
through it there we go and let's find out what is inside this
particular video card box so the first thing we find is a clear plastic cover
that covers it next we've got a couple of pci express
uh power adapters so that's a dual molex to single pci
express and then another dual molex to single pci express right there and then
we've got a dvi to vga adapter
as well as a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter
nice of them to include that because how many people have a mini HDMI cable
versus how many people have an HDMI cable
okay let's take out the foam here the foam is protecting the video card
oh that's kind of interesting this doesn't actually look like it's quite
the right size for the 470. look at this you can kind of take it and stick it
over there and then i'm going to zoom out a little bit so you can see what i'm
doing a little bit better here but uh see look at look at this you can
actually take the 470 and it looks like it just just fits right on this side but
then on this side you've got like an extra inch of space so i'm wondering if maybe this carton wasn't designed for
the 480 and then they just kind of slapped 470
on the outside of it either way okay inside this baggie we
find first a warning so the warning is about
just how hot the gtx 470 gets attention
before booting your pc make sure you connect the two 6 pin pci express power
connectors and please allow the graphics card to cool after operation before
removing it from your system signed NVIDIA thank you for that next inside
here you'll find a few more things so the first one is supersonic sled
design garage test drive your GeForce GPU so it's got
a couple of demo demos on there then you have a driver installation cd as well as
a zotac case badge don't use that well you can use the case back but don't use
the cd download the latest drivers off NVIDIA.com uh here's a little list of the zotac
boosters well the NVIDIA cuda enabled applications that you can run with this
card you've got a zotac extended warranty as well as quick installation
guide booklet and then last but not least you have a zotac user's manual
now let's have a look at the card itself and this is another thing that i'm uh i
was pretty sure about but not 100 yeah on the outside of the box this
really does look kind of reused from the 480 which i totally understand because
the reality of it is they didn't have a whole lot of time to do packaging
between NVIDIA sending the cards to their partners and then putting branding
on them and sending them out for retail but on the side of this box it actually
says it requires one six pin and one eight pin pci express connector but this
card actually runs off two six pin connectors so that would be completely
unnecessary so i'm just gonna stand here and show you the card because that's simpler than using that stupid remote to
zoom so you've got your fan here the fan is quite loud if it's anything like the
gtx 480 which i also did a video about the fan speed of zotac has actually
managed to work their branding right onto the plastic of the card itself
which is kind of surprising to me because um
for the most part all of the launch cards i've seen have just kind of had a
sticker on them so they've got their serial number on the top here or what it may be a part
number more zotac branding GeForce branding this is present on all 470s and
480s up at the top you've got two sli bridge connectors for up to three-way
sli on the back you can see right where the GPU is located here where the pcb is
busiest and then right by the fan NVIDIA has actually worked in a ventilation
hole for that fan to get more airflow sucked in from the back let's work our
way down to the bottom of the card where we will find a standard pci express uh
16x connector and then we can go from there around to i guess the back where
you can see right down into the shroud here there's uh some of the power
regulation stuff is right there so you're going to get some incidental airflow from the fan that's going to
keep that nice and cool okay and then around to the business end
of the card this is where your two dvi connectors are don't forget that these
470s and 480s do support surround view
but only in sli mode so you would actually plug two monitors into two dvi
and then you would take another card and then plug a single monitor into that and
you can actually run 3d vision on three monitors at the same time so that's
pretty cool then you've got your mini HDMI connector so thank you for checking
out my unboxing and first look at the
zotac gtx 470