PNY nVidia GeForce GTX 480 Fermi DirectX 11 Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,289 words · ~6 min read
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so after many trials and tribulations uh you can actually click here to see how I
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got my GeForce gtx480 on launch day I
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finally have one today I have the PNY accelerate performance Edition GeForce
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gtx480 these cards are rarer than hen
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teeth but I did manage to get my hands on one so I'm going to be opening it for
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your unboxing pleasure so let's uh start with what's on the outside of the box
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first of all down at the bottom you can see that this has 15 36 MB of gddr5
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memory this is NVIDIA's first video card with gddr5 on the high end now they
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actually have a low-end GPU that uses it but it's not it doesn't make a
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difference at that point anyway so this is the fastest memory card from NVIDIA
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ever you've got 3D Visions surround so if you actually have two GTX 480s you
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can not only run surround with three monitors but you can do it in 3D with
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the NVIDIA 3D glasses next we have support for physics and Cuda these are
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nothing new but they're still being continued with and OB obviously NVIDIA
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SLI support now let's uh oh yeah PNY
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also includes five free bonus uh movie downloads from pny.com movies so you
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should check that out that's uh something that I don't think anyone else
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is offering with their gtx480 on the back we've got the basic specifications
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and key features as well as minimum system requirements so there's going to be some interesting stuff in here first
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of all specifications can you get a look at that so that people can just read it
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and freeze the frame if they want to is that good enough let's just call that
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good enough okay key features direct X11 this is NVIDIA's First Direct X11 card
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everything else here is pretty much stuff I've already covered at the front
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or stuff that's just being carried over from previous cards minimum system
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requirements this one's interesting because NVIDIA actually recommends a
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minimum 600 watt or greater system power
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supply with a minimum 12vt current rating of 42 amps so that means that if
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you're running just a a barebone system other than that you will need to have at
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least at least 42 amps on your 12vt rail you should be using a modern power
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supply with this card if you're not then that's absolutely crazy all right let's
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keep on moving and package contents we'll get to that when we
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actually open the contents of the package so I am breaking the seal on the
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GTX 480 here we go let's peel that back
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and there is a paper sleeve oh no hey
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check this out high class that is a cardboard sleeve not a paper sleeve
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leave you can tell it's a premium card when okay the next thing we find inside
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is um a little scrap of paper I'm guessing that's nothing then we have an
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installation CD you should download the latest drivers off NVIDIA.com don't even
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use this next we have a GeForce graphics
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card quick start guide from PNY so um
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let's see they're just showing you all the different basic kinds of connectors
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that you might find on your video card and they're giving you some instructions
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on how to install them in your case all right thank you PNY for covering that
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for us next we have a two Molex to one
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PCI Express six pin adapter although frankly if you don't have a power supply
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that has the required connectors for this then you should just buy one
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because you don't want to be you don't want to be running something like this
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with a lousy power supply if your power supply blows up it can take a lot of
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other stuff with it then we have a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter so uh I'll show you
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why you need that in just a second and then one DVI to VGA adapter
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all right so let's uh get the foam off here and let's get this baby opened
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there we are so the first thing you notice about it is that the whole front
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of the card I mean this is not uh shiny
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plastic this is metal this is heat sink here guys this is one hot card so that
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means that you've got all of this extra surface area that you normally wouldn't
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have on a video card dedicated to dissipating heat with any incidental air
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flow that comes over the card not only that but compared to ati's radon HD
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series which I happen to have one of here you can see that the back panel
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uses the full length of the adjacent PCI slot for cooling and ventilation versus
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ATI cutting off half of it all right the next thing we've got okay well here I
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told you I'd tell you why you need a mini HDMI connector that's why now you
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can only actually connect two of these three at a time so each card can output
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to two displays but this way you can do HDMI and DVI or DVI and DVI all right
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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
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this thick on a stock cooler for a graphics card not one not two not three
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but four heat pipes coming out from right over where the GPU core is so you
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can see right here that's where that large GTX 480 chip is and that's where
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all of the heat pipes go because really there's nothing else on here except
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maybe the voltage regulators and is that wow that's actually stuck on there
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bizarre except the voltage Regulators that actually needs a lot of cooling so
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let's go around to the bottom of the card this is still a standard PCI
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Express 2 card so that means it's going to fit into any PCI Express 1.0 1.1 1.1a
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or PCI Express 2.0 uh motherboard around
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the back you see we find some of the voltage regulator regulation components
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and the rest of them seem to be sitting uh down in see see under the fan right
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there so those are actually getting direct air flow right from the fan when
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it's spinning NVIDIA is using their uh their standard kind of fan they've been
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using since uh wow the 8800 series I
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guess they've been using this particular blower fan okay another thing that I
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want to point out about this card right off the bat is that this is again in
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line with the power requirements it requires not only one PCI Express six
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pin connector not an additional PCI Express six pin connector but a six pin
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and an 8 Pin PCI Express connector so you need a serious power supply to run
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this card and I think that pretty much does it for my un boxing oh you know
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what else I should mention PNY has actually just added lifetime warranty to
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their uh their tick boxes on the both sides of their cards so the GeForce GTX
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470 and 480 from PNY both feature a
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lifetime warranty thank you for checking out my unboxing