ZOTAC GTX480 Review
Intro and Tech Specs
Published: 15th April 2010 | Source: Zotac | Price: £441.76 |
Introduction
Has anything ever needed less of an introduction than the GTX480, the Fermi, the latest generation of cards from nVidia? For a long while nVidia held the crown as pretty much the only card anyone would choose. The 8800GTX was so outstanding that it was still munching through games long after nVidia had moved onto the GTX280.
The GTX280 was a very powerful card, but the move of nVidia to CUDA and PhysX integration also meant it was very pricey and this enabled ATI to beat them with a card that concentrated solely on being blindingly fast in games at an affordable price point.
Last year ATI released their 58xx series of graphics cards that not only provided full DirectX 11 functionality, but were insanely fast. Since then everyone has been waiting for the response from nVidia.
Just in case you've been living under a rock there is a hell of a lot of information to get through about the rather tortuous development path this has gone through. It's been delayed. It's had demos that weren't actually the card running. There have been genuine demos of the card that were rumoured to be water-cooled.
However, thanks to ZOTAC we've finally got our hands on one to test and can see not only which of the early reports are accurate, but also whether nVidias decision to concentrate firmly on the "extras" of CUDA, PhysX and such-like have made this a jack of all trades, or truly a gaming maestro.
Technical Specifications
Product Name | ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 480 | ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 470 |
GPU | GeForce® GTX480 | GeForce® GTX 480 |
Engine Clock speed | 700 MHz | 607 MHz |
CUDA™ Cores | 480 | 448 |
Processor Clock | 1401 MHz | 1215 MHz |
Memory Clock speed | 3696 MHz | 3348 MHz |
Memory | 1536MB GDDR5 | 1280MB GDDR5 |
Memory interface | 384-bit | 320-bit |
Display Outputs | Dual dual-link DVI-I, mini HDMI 1.3a | |
HDCP | Yes | |
Cooling | Active (with fan) (dual-slot) | |
DirectX® version | DirectX® 11 with Shader Model 5.0 | |
Other hardware features | 8-channel Digital Surround Sound (LPCM), NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine, Quantum Effects™ Technology | |
Software Features | nView® Multi-Display, NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD Technology, NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology, NVIDIA® PhysX® technology, OpenGL® 3.2, NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ Surround technology, | |
Windows 7 capability | Windows® 7 with DirectCompute support | |
Lets head over the page for our first look.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by name='clone38'
Aye its a bit of a let down by NV this time as i was really looking forward to the new cards.
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I hope the next generation brings something better to the show, because these are too hot for what they give, and when a 5970 is only £50 more, they represent very poor value.Quote
My 280ocx is dammed loud on air but having heard these I couldn't put up with the noise.Quote
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