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Fermi Arrives - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480

By Kenny Yeo - 27 Mar 2010

Temperature & Power Consumption

Temperature

With a maximum recorded operating temperature of a whopping 92 degrees Celsius, the GeForce GTX 480 is the hottest reference card we've seen in recent years. And it is apparent that the chunky reference cooler is a necessity. At 92 degrees Celsius, it is also operating dangerously close to its threshold of 105 degrees Celsius.

Here's a point to note though, since the drivers we used for the GeForce GTX 480 were still in beta, this could be a problem of poor power optimization that could possibly be corrected in future driver releases. However, if our experience is anything to go by, improvements in driver revisions have little to no effect when it comes to aspects like heat and power consumption.

 

Power Consumption

While the GeForce GTX 480 offers unparalleled single-GPU performance, it also has an unmatched hunger for power. It's peak reading of 332W eclipses that of the Radeon HD 5870 and even the Radeon HD 5970, which has two GPUs! It seems then that NVIDIA has done little to improve on the power efficiency of their new cards. Again, take note that this could be due to poor driver optimization, but as we've mentioned above, we wouldn't bet on it.

NVIDIA's defence on the subject of power consumption is their performance-per-watt efficiency where in DX11 games, their card's much higher performance would give much better figures in the ratio aspect. A lot of the Fermi architecture was geared for the future with DX11 heavy titles and as such running DX10 and DX9 game titles would result in a lacklustre outcome for power consumption. While this rationale is somewhat true going by the performance numbers we've attained, what we can say is that it doesn't alter the absolute measured power consumption figures. Still, we would take this chance to test more games and applications in our spare time, but going by our usual base of comparison that's normally a good representation, the GeForce GTX 480 seems to consume too much power. It's saving grace however is that at times its performance numbers are as high as the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, so it's probably not too bad.

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8.0
  • Performance 9.5
  • Features 8.5
  • Value 7
The Good
Untouchable single-GPU performance
3D Gaming
The Bad
Costly to own and run
Power-hungry
Runs incredibly hot
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