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As would be expected with Zotac, the box artwork comprises a dragon in a fiery environment, perhaps not an ideal initial impression to be giving customers considering the GTX480's already infamous temperature issues. 😉
The bundle is rather spartan. A VGA adapter, several power converters and installation guides.
The card itself is a brute of a thing with a hefty cooler taking centerstage. Two orange fans adorn either side of the cooler and a substantial copper cooler is seen on the GPU core.
The underside follows the reference design, a plain black PCB identical in size. Zotac have retained the six phase power delivery system, I found this a little surprising as many companies enhance this area for overclocking. That said, the reference design is impressive so we would assume no potential long term stability issues will arise.
The copper GPU block is a heatpipe design which connects to the formidable heatsink, the production quality is very high indeed. There are five thick heatpipes and they are cooled by two 92mm fans. This cooler appears to us to be a modified Zalman VF3000-N which retails for around £35 in the UK right now.
We like the twin fan design as they push air directly onto the PCB, cooling the memory and VRM heatsink. Obviously with a cooler like this we recommend a chassis with powerful air movement as all the heat with this cooler design will get dumped internally.
The card comes with a mini HDMI connector and two dual link DVI ports. The picture above shows the height of the cooler in all its glory.
The card requires a 1×6 pin and 1×8 pin power from the power supply.
Before we crack on with the review, if you wish to read about the GTX480 architecture, head over here.
Great review zardon interesting to read about temps and power consumption with this board. I could never buy this mind you the missus would kill me, literally.
This will really put Zotac on the map. first good 480 GTX ive seen. mega money aint it? ouchies
Grreat review man. Seems to be a very solid product from Zotac, shame Nvidia didnt work out a deal with zalman for the reference products.
Funny enough I was thinking the same thing, why not have put a good cooler on it in the first place? people in this sector can live with the power drain, but the noise and heat? mad.
Great looking board, but 3 slots? christ they are struggling to cool this monster.
Very interesting…
It has huge power consumption drops, despite actually having a higher voltage. It is possible that the better cooling on the VRM area has made it more effeicient?
Excellent Review! Overall looks like a very nice improvement, but im sure the 257 drivers helped .
Hi,Is it possible to ajust fan speed at lower level with rivatuner for the noise in idle mode.
The standard VF3000 connected to a standard fan header though, the custom one Zotac is using connects directly to the card’s fan header. Which I would guess means it has fan control.
Still hoping I’d see more competition against the 5970
maybe because they use more efficient cooler and not using those stupid high ampere fan, and because they are lower temperature it’s make the fan spin less, thus make power consumption to drop.
This price is high, but so is 5970
I dont think its as high as people say. for the technology.
And I would hardly consider it priced competitive when the closest option performance wise is $100 cheaper, and of course by closest I mean virtually identical performance.
I’m not surprised about the power consumption; it’s been compared to the power consumption of the “launch card” not the mass production card. My GTX 480 consumes just 50w more at load that my old GTX 285. By the way most GTX 480 owners seem to reach 830-840 on the core with stock voltage; otherwise another excellent review.
So if I wanted to put two of these big daddies on my Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard… would I have to use slot 1 and 4? Wonder if slot 4 would even have enough room below it…
These chips are just not that great. Need a refresh for sure. I can’t wait to see how that turns out and if this ends up being one of the more inefficent GPUs. I’d bring up the R600 -> RV670 transition but they enjoyed a major new manufacturing process there and added Powerplay. I can’t see the refresh to this beast being on anything other than 40nm again.
It’s a known fact that when electronics get hot, they become inefficient. That’s why I don’t let my CPU over 60C and my GPU over 70C because they just start getting really inefficient, plus it’s not good for them. When you are dealling with something with 3 billion transistors, it’s definately going to make a difference when they start expanding from heat and such.
While they a specified for higher, it’s still not good for them. Doesn’t matter how well it’s built, it’s simply physics: when something heats up, it expands. When you have that many tiny little things all bunched together, expansion is the last thing you want, no matter how little.
im happy with my 4870X2 to be honest, these figures are insanely good, but I dont have a 30 inch screen, its pointless. I dont think many people get that. You arent only buying a card that costs the same as a car, you need a monitor which costs even more.
Yeah people do buy cards not GPUs, and many of those same folks whine when they realize their 2Gb card has a 1Gb frame buffer and performs worse than a single GPU in games if a proper driver profile isn’t present. See it constantly on gaming forums.
No way this should have got 8/10 or whatever. runs too hot still and takes too much power, way too much power. so ineffieicent
@ Robert – really? I think it is a good 7 or 8 /10. People that buy this wont care about 300 watts out the window. its performing to a level no other card does right now.
I am not sure if I agree, I like the performance, but it all seems so wasteful. I liked the analogy of the humvee in the review, it is exactly tlike that. its like throwing something over the top to get better performance than a product taking half the power. reminds me of the old days with intel V AMD and intel always aiming for clock speed and AMD being more efficient
STill dont rate this series of cards. its an improvement, but at what price? same cost as my car insurance for a year. ill pass, thanks though. good review.
interesting to read, thanks Zardon
still not sure what to think, fast as hell and then some, but the price and power sucking requirements put me off recommending it. I think the review is generous, I would have gave it 6 or 7 out of ten.
300 watts power drain, and a three slot cooler to get it around 80c.
Ludicrous. You were far too nice on this card Zardon.
I like the cooling solution, glad to see zalman are still alive and kicking
Good card, but this should be the reference design. Nvidia take note next time, those reference coolers suck the big one.
interesting to see the power consumption thanks to better effiecency
Good review KG, thanks. enjoyed it. Will never own one, even if I had one id sell it 🙂 quite happy with my 275 GTX
How the hell can they get away with charging over 500 quid for a graphics card? seriously w,t,f,
wicked review. temps are solid. frame rates are up.
Would need a new PSU to get it to work, but its an improvement over the reference, even if it costs more.
SO Zotac have charged £70 (reference is 430 in UK) for a £30 cooler and increased clocks a bit? nice cash in there. wouldnt have gave this 8./10 – 6/10 IMO.
id love one, if they dropped the price to 250. Reckon that will happen? I can dream 🙂
Nah, far too much money Zotac. £450 seems a better price point, would sell more. well maybe not !
I like the GTX480. I really love nvidia drivers. But I dont like this price. nice dream card for the rich. im waiting on the GTX460 review !
informative review and i like the power comsumption figures, well I mean its nice you included them and interesting to see them drop when compared with reference card. Still seems high to me.
Why do they always have crappy dragons on their boxes? Is their CEO Gandalf or something?
three slot cooling, seems really extreme, but clearly its needed. Still not sold on this range nvidia, runs far too hot and needs extreme solutions to compensate.
Nvidia – if you built the door way right the first time, then you dont need to knock it down to slot in 4 wider doors later. The core solution is flawed. Performance is great, but it just seems to me like they slotted an F1 car into a fiats chassis and its all over the place.
:ROFL:
Is there a mainboard in the world that would allow you to run SLi with this?
When EVGA said they’re going early with water cooling it sounded like a mistake
Now it seems to be the only sensible way to tame this beast
3 slots
:ROFL:
Yeah SLI would be impossible wouldnt it ? Surely the cards would be too far apart?
I don’t want to buy one. I just want to own one.
Top Best Graphics Cards For The Money: July 2010 here http://stylishfirst.com/best-graphics-cards-for-the-money-july-2010/