Zotac nVidia GeForce GTX 470 Fermi DirectX 11 Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,546 words · ~7 min read
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fermi is the card that everyone's been talking about for the last couple weeks
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and for good reason it's NVIDIA's first directx 11 part now this isn't quite the
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one that people are as excited about that's the gtx 480 the higher end one
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but today i'm going to be having a look at a zotac gtx 470 so this is a slightly
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cut down gtx 480 basically they've knocked down the memory to uh
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1280 megabytes and then they've knocked
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down the memory interface to 320 bit so that means that it's slightly slower
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access to slightly less memory and the clock speeds are down a little bit as
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well but it's not all bad news you also save a little bit of money versus a gtx 480.
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now something to note about zotac's gtx
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470 is that they've extended the warranty in the us and canada they're
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actually offering a lifetime warranty on their 470 and 480 parts and they're not
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the only vendor to step up and that in that regard with this generation of
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cards actually p and y did the same thing so here on the side you can see
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we've got some i'm going to just zoom in here so you can see the box a little bit
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better we have the included sort of supported software so zotac boost is try
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GeForce accelerated software okay including badaboom which is for encoding
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video and then be reveal for enhancing videos and a couple other things then
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you've got your usual tags from NVIDIA so physics as well as
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do around the side you've got sli support pure video hd as well as GeForce
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kudo let's go around to the back of the box where it says this thing goes really
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fast and then let's go to the side of the box where it says sort of more
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detailed information so it gives you the full specs of the card which if i zoom
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in just a little tiny bit more you might actually be able to read there you go
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and then it also gives you the system requirements and key features and the
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system requirements aren't here i'm guessing i'm going around to the other
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side of the box for that yay there we go minimum system requirements are right
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there so pci express 2.0 compliant motherboard with one dual bit 16x
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graphics slot a six pin and one eight
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pin pci express connector minimum 550
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watt or greater power supply with a minimum 12 volt current rating of 38
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amps okay 10 tm it's see this is a weird thing
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okay look at this
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Intel pentium 4 AMD athlon xp class
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processor or higher show me an athlon xp motherboard with a
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pci express slot why even bother putting that on the side
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of the box it boggles the mind okay so why don't we go ahead i mean everyone
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does it i'm not just calling out zotac on this one for some reason everybody
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seems to include that particular requirement
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athlon xp or better um so
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hey i don't have a knife today but what i do have is an NVIDIA pen to break the
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seal with so how appropriate is that i'm just going to poke a hole in the tape
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here wow that's pretty resilient tape this might be a bit of a problem it's
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very strong tape today but that's okay with the power of NVIDIA i can get
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through it there we go and let's find out what is inside this
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particular video card box so the first thing we find is a clear plastic cover
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that covers it next we've got a couple of pci express
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uh power adapters so that's a dual molex to single pci
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express and then another dual molex to single pci express right there and then
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we've got a dvi to vga adapter
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as well as a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter
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nice of them to include that because how many people have a mini HDMI cable
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versus how many people have an HDMI cable
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okay let's take out the foam here the foam is protecting the video card
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oh that's kind of interesting this doesn't actually look like it's quite
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the right size for the 470. look at this you can kind of take it and stick it
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over there and then i'm going to zoom out a little bit so you can see what i'm
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doing a little bit better here but uh see look at look at this you can
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actually take the 470 and it looks like it just just fits right on this side but
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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
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the 480 and then they just kind of slapped 470
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on the outside of it either way okay inside this baggie we
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find first a warning so the warning is about
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just how hot the gtx 470 gets attention
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before booting your pc make sure you connect the two 6 pin pci express power
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connectors and please allow the graphics card to cool after operation before
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removing it from your system signed NVIDIA thank you for that next inside
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here you'll find a few more things so the first one is supersonic sled
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design garage test drive your GeForce GPU so it's got
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a couple of demo demos on there then you have a driver installation cd as well as
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a zotac case badge don't use that well you can use the case back but don't use
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the cd download the latest drivers off NVIDIA.com uh here's a little list of the zotac
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boosters well the NVIDIA cuda enabled applications that you can run with this
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card you've got a zotac extended warranty as well as quick installation
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guide booklet and then last but not least you have a zotac user's manual
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now let's have a look at the card itself and this is another thing that i'm uh i
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was pretty sure about but not 100 yeah on the outside of the box this
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really does look kind of reused from the 480 which i totally understand because
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the reality of it is they didn't have a whole lot of time to do packaging
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between NVIDIA sending the cards to their partners and then putting branding
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on them and sending them out for retail but on the side of this box it actually
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says it requires one six pin and one eight pin pci express connector but this
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card actually runs off two six pin connectors so that would be completely
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unnecessary so i'm just gonna stand here and show you the card because that's simpler than using that stupid remote to
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zoom so you've got your fan here the fan is quite loud if it's anything like the
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gtx 480 which i also did a video about the fan speed of zotac has actually
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managed to work their branding right onto the plastic of the card itself
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which is kind of surprising to me because um
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for the most part all of the launch cards i've seen have just kind of had a
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sticker on them so they've got their serial number on the top here or what it may be a part
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number more zotac branding GeForce branding this is present on all 470s and
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480s up at the top you've got two sli bridge connectors for up to three-way
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sli on the back you can see right where the GPU is located here where the pcb is
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busiest and then right by the fan NVIDIA has actually worked in a ventilation
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hole for that fan to get more airflow sucked in from the back let's work our
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way down to the bottom of the card where we will find a standard pci express uh
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16x connector and then we can go from there around to i guess the back where
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you can see right down into the shroud here there's uh some of the power
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regulation stuff is right there so you're going to get some incidental airflow from the fan that's going to
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keep that nice and cool okay and then around to the business end
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of the card this is where your two dvi connectors are don't forget that these
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470s and 480s do support surround view
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but only in sli mode so you would actually plug two monitors into two dvi
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and then you would take another card and then plug a single monitor into that and
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you can actually run 3d vision on three monitors at the same time so that's
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pretty cool then you've got your mini HDMI connector so thank you for checking
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out my unboxing and first look at the
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zotac gtx 470