In the test 15 years ago: Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480 was the Föhn 2.0 67 comments
After the more mixed GeForce GTX-200 series, which the Radeon HD-5800 series couldn’t compete with, NVIDIA followed with a new flagship, the GeForce GTX 480 (test). However, the manufacturer compensated for the high performance with enormous heat and volume, which brought back memories of the FX 5800 Ultra, aka “The Föhn.”
An extreme graphics card
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 was based on the new GF100 chip with approximately 3 billion transistors, manufactured in the 40 nm process. Compared to the GeForce GTX 285, the number of shader units doubled to 480, which were also operated at 1,401 instead of 1,215 MHz. Unlike its predecessor, and like the Radeon HD 5870, the GeForce GTX 480 dominated the Direct-X11 API. At the same time, Nvidia expanded the memory to 1.5 GB GDDR5, which was also connected to a relatively wide 384-bit memory interface. This resulted in a memory bandwidth of 177 GB/s. The GeForce GTX 480’s TDP was specified at 250 watts, which is why it relied on a 6-pin and 8-pin connection for the power supply, which together could deliver 75 + 150 watts in addition to the 75 watts from the PCIE slot. RADEON HD 5850 RADEON HD 5870 GEFORCE GTX 285 GEFORCE GTX 470 GEFORCE GTX 480 CHIP RV870 / CYPRESS GF100 Transistors Approx. 2.15 billion approx. 1.4 billion approx. 3 billion 40nm 55nm CHIP CRASS
(MADD) 288 (5d) 320 (5d) 240 (1d) 448 (1d) 480 (1d) Flops (MADD / ADD) 2,090 Gflop / S 2,720 Gflop 1,063 Gflop MPIX / S 24,280 MPIX / S 33,600 MPIX / S TMUS 72 80 56 60 Taus 72 80 56 60 Texfelfüllrate 52,200 Mtex / S 68,000 Mtex / S 51,840 MTEX / S 33,992 MTEX / S 42,000 MTEX / S Shader-model sm 5 sm 5 Effective Windows Window
Power Saving Feature ✓ Memory Amount 1,024 MByte GDDR3 1,280 MByte GDDR5 1,536 MByte GDDR5 Memory 2,000 MHz 1,242 MHz 1,848 MHz Memory Interface 256 bit 320 Bit 384 Bit Bandwidth 128,000 Mbyte/s 153,600 Mbyte/s 158,976 Mbyte/s 134,080 Mbyte/s 158,976 Mbyte/s 1340,080 Mbyte/s 177,408 Mbyte/s
Visually, the GeForce GTX 480 stands out with its powerful cooling system. The large dual-slot cooler adorned a cooling pad that was placed over the GF100 GPU and covered about half of the graphics card. This cooling pad visually provided a first indication of the enormous heat Nvidia had to pay for the GeForce GTX 480. Five heat pipes from the GPU itself carried the waste heat to the heat sink. A 65 mm axial fan drew cool air from the case and ducted it out. The two ventilation slots in the graphics card’s PCB, which were supposed to provide more airflow to the fan, were a second visual reference to the required cooling capacity.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 480
In terms of connections, two dual-link DCI and a mini HDMI connection were provided, while Nvidia completely dispensed with the DisplayPort. Compared to AMD’s competition, the GeForce GTX 480 was also able to handle a maximum of two monitors simultaneously, so at least a dual-graphics card SLI team had to be used for a 3D surround setup.
Fast but terrible
With the GeForce GTX 480, NVIDIA has reclaimed the performance crown from AMD, which previously delivered the fastest GPU with the Radeon HD 5870. However, the performance gain was only 4 to 18 percent on average, depending on the resolution and settings selected. Compared to its direct predecessor, the GeForce GTX 285, the GeForce GTX 480 achieved an average gain of 50 to 64 percent. The results were particularly different compared to X11 direct: here, the GeForce GTX 480 achieved slightly more performance than the Radeon HD 5870, with 16 to 22 percent.
Hammerhart received B grades. Here, the GeForce GTX 480 failed on all levels. The volume was astronomically high at 68.5 dB(A) under the last one, even surpassing the dual GPU graphics cards Geforce GTX 295, Radeon HD 4890, and Radeon HD 5970. Despite this deafening noise, the GPU temperature under load was 93°C, thus also at the top of the test field. Combined, these two properties led to the officially named chip being codenamed “Thermi” and sparked associations with Nvidia’s GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, which was often mocked as a “hair dryer.” In terms of power consumption under load, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 pulled the hat trick in the worst B-Ratings and, with a total system power consumption of 452 watts, was once again at the top, even leaving the two GPU graphics cards behind.
Conclusion
With the GeForce GTX 480, NVIDIA achieved new benchmarks and was able to overtake the AMD Radeon HD 5870, but the manufacturer compensated for this cost with new benchmarks in terms of volume, temperature, and performance. At 480 euros, the GeForce GTX 480 was also a good 100 euros more expensive than the Radeon HD 5870, which meant that the price-performance ratio for the AMD graphics card was better. Anyone who absolutely wanted the fastest graphics card or who wanted to shop at Nvidia for another reason was well served by the GeForce GTX 480. All other users were at least advised against the benchmark design due to the terrible B-boxes. It looked much better here with only the slightly slower Radeon HD 5870. In the “In the Test 15 Years Ago” category, the editorial team has been taking a look at the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. We list the last 20 articles published in this series below:
LMX Superleggera with liquid metal instead of multi-GPU heat pipes with NVIDIA and AMD thanks to Hydratel Core i7-980X as the first CPU with six cores Sparkling Pentium G6950 and Core i3-530. Grand Kama Crossdie Geforce GT 240 with 1,024 MByte DDR3 war sinnlosAMDs Radeon HD 5670 bot DirectX 11 for 79 eurosHTCs Touch2 was a savings smartphone for 270 eurosThe advantage of SSDs over HDDs in the smartphone alltagrazers for mobile gaming via BluetoothBlackber Bros. was also a favorable Hitnvidias Geforce GT 240 was at Teuenoctuas NH-D14 was the ultimate air factor Radeon HD 5970 processor was fast and Jerking Corsairs 800D was great for Radeon HD 5750 brought Apphire water cooling to a recommendation Einamd Einamd was fun on three displays on three displays.
Even more content of this type and many other reports and anecdotes can be found in the Retro Corner of the TechAstuce forum.
Topics: Retro NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards
An engineer by training, Alexandre shares his knowledge on GPU performance for gaming and creation.
