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Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 and 470 specs emerge

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March 19, 2010, 11:55 AM EST

With Nvidia's next-generation Fermi graphics cards now just a week away, some new details have trickled in courtesy of Turkish site donanimhaber.com and VR-Zone.com. According to the publications, the GTX 480 will offer a total of 480 shader processors, a 384-bit interface working with 1.5GB of onboard GDDR5 RAM, and clock speeds of 700MHz, 1,401MHz, and 1,848MHz for the core, shaders and memory respectively.


Measuring around 26cm in length, or roughly 2cm less than the Radeon HD 5870, the card will draw power from a six-pin + eight-pin power connector combination and feature dual-link DVI and mini-HDMI outputs. Pricing is supposedly set at $499 and the TDP rating is quoted a being below the 300W threshold, apparently at 250W. Leaked pictures show the card will occupy two slots and feature a cooling system design with protruding heatpipes.


The less powerful GTX 470 on the other hand will reportedly make do with 448 shader processors while offering a core clock of 607MHz, shader clock of 1,215MHz, and a memory clock of 1,674MHz. The card will have a 320-bit memory interface and 1280MB of GDDR5 memory, along with a TDP of 225W and a more sensible $349 price tag.

According to VR-Zone, internal benchmarks reveal that the GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 are some 5-10% faster than the Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 respectively. Such estimations are of course unofficial, but we'll have clearer idea of the value behind these cards when benchmarks start popping up after next week's launch.

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User Comments (63)

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Alster37
on March 19, 2010
12:01 PM
finally we get to see it, hopefully I will be able to save enough to get the 470 if it performs well which I will wait for techspot to review.

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Docnoq
on March 19, 2010
12:06 PM
Wow. Neither card is above $500. Those are quite possibly the most sensible prices I have seen on newly released nvidia cards. Not to say that $500 is by any means a small price tag, but considering how nvidia generally prices their cards, I feel like these anticipated prices are more reasonable.

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compdata
on March 19, 2010
12:11 PM
"Let it begin, Let it begin!"

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yorro
on March 19, 2010
12:24 PM
Reducing the price could be the smartest thing nVidia has done.

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TomSEA
on March 19, 2010
12:39 PM
Cool....can't wait to see some benchmarks on these bad boys.

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thatguyandrew92
on March 19, 2010
1:06 PM
WOAH! Great prices! These things are gonna FLY off the shelves!

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jsper3602
on March 19, 2010
1:09 PM
That 5 to 10% gain over the Radeon doesn´t seem enough to me. Better wait for benchmarks to give a verdict. On the hand thanks to the competition, nvidia will released this card under $500 dollars. I remember you can get a GTX 280 for around $ 700 on launch, so a $499 start prize for the GTX 480 is impressive.

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slh28
on March 19, 2010
1:15 PM
I think nvidia had no choice but to set the prices at those points, price/performance wise, they will probably be on a par with the 5800 series. Let's hope this leads to a price war because the AMD cards have been on the market for a while and I think they can afford to lower their prices a little by now.

Btw the power requirements are quite a lot...

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zilliak
on March 19, 2010
1:16 PM
i was expecting so much more. WOW this was supposed to be life changing. Off to buy the 5870

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Guest
on March 19, 2010
1:27 PM
can someone explain me why nvidia's GTX 480 GDDR5 memory works at 1848MHz... and ATI's GDDR5 is 4x the clock speed of the memory, say HD5850 has a memory of 1000MHz for and effective clock of 4000MHz... or the HD5870 with 1200MHz for the memory for an effective clock of 4800MHz... so.... anyone?

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Regenweald
on March 19, 2010
1:34 PM
A brand new card offering a 10% more than competition that is almost a generation old ? That and the 5000 series is due for a refresh in a few months with the drivers beginning to hit full stride ? So in summary: 10% more performance than a 6 month old card, more expensive, a hell of a lot hotter. numkay.

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mystic420
on March 19, 2010
1:44 PM
Well I have 3 GTX275 OC's running 3-way SLI and am perfectly happy with it as I can play all my games at MAX graphics and get unbelievable frame rates. So until I need to upgrade I think I'll wait for the price to drop a bit. I would like to see how they stack up against the latest ATI cards. Besides my next upgrade will be a complete rebuild and 4 of those baby's at $2000, that will have to wait a bit in this economy...

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Vrmithrax
on March 19, 2010
1:52 PM
Interesting... Internal benchmarks show about 5-10% improvement over the ATi competitors... But, of course, those numbers will be based on the original benchmarks done after the 5xxx series was released. The new ATi drivers, with a reported increase of up to 10-20% on some titles, might just completely nullify any nVidia advantage right from the starting block.

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burty117
on March 19, 2010
2:03 PM
Well if you think about it. Your getting 10% gains for a product which is cheaper! plus no offence to ATI but i just prefer nvidia. The drivers are less confusing and i've had problems with ATI before.

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Guest
on March 19, 2010
2:20 PM
All i can say is im not impressed after going from 2 gtx260s core 216 in sli to one 5850 which i preordered at 260.00 i am dissapointed im definitely getting another 5850 to xfire hopefully they'll come back down in price and i can complete my i7 rig!!!!!

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Relic
on March 19, 2010
2:21 PM
Looks interesting, good to see they dropped the prices to be more competitive as $500+ didn't seem realistic with the competition. Hopefully this will lead ATi to drop card prices a bit in the coming months too on 58xx series. Time to wait until the benchmarks come out on these cards compared to the 58xx series. Curious to know if they still have that 5-10% unconfirmed edge after the recent ATi driver updates. On a side note though the GTX480 cooling system looks good .

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Timonius
on March 19, 2010
2:29 PM
Aaaaand it looks like Nvidia is closing the gap, can they push past the 5870?

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Guest
on March 19, 2010
2:30 PM
Burty117> The Fermi is not cheaper. its 5-10% gains possile. With an 18% more expensive nVidia card. $499 vs $420 (standard cooler, 5870 on newegg)

The HD 5970 is more expensive, but it would smoke the GTX 480. The Fermi was compared to the single chip card, not the more expensive dual chip.

Asside the cost per watt, improved fans to cool the case and air condition your place...ouch.

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Archean
on March 19, 2010
2:30 PM
I think there won't be much difference between performance of ATI or nVidia offerings (considering the availability of new ATI drivers next week); and if that turns out to be the case, it would put more pressure on nVidia from the get go. However, if they have slight edge, it may mean ATI will cut prices, and it will be a win-win situation for anyone planning to upgrade

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sagejay
on March 19, 2010
3:07 PM
I wish one day I could buy a card like this, but they are so expensive. Still, I can't wait to see the benchmark scores.

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seefizzle
on March 19, 2010
3:30 PM
Can anyone tell me how well Nvidia cards work in AMD based systems? I've been wondering this for a while. Should I stick with ATI video cards. Are there any problems putting nvidia cards in AMD systems?

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Puiu
on March 19, 2010
3:30 PM
If ATI cut the prices even by a few dollars then Nvidia will have a lot of problems considering the fact that they already are releasing them at lower prices than originally planed.
And with the release of the new drivers, ATI is probably drinking Dom Pérignon.

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lgraves
on March 19, 2010
3:36 PM
Those look beast! too bad I won't be able to afford one until like 3 years.

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ET3D
on March 19, 2010
4:04 PM
I was expecting a lot more than 5-10% difference. I'll be waiting for the benchmarks to see if that's the real difference, but if it is, it's definitely disappointing. $500 for a new card that's 5-10% faster than an existing $400 card doesn't sound too good.

seefizzle, Nvidia cards have no problem working with an AMD CPU.

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dividebyzero
on March 19, 2010
4:43 PM
can someone explain me why nvidia's GTX 480 GDDR5 memory works at 1848MHz... and ATI's GDDR5 is 4x the clock speed of the memory, say HD5850 has a memory of 1000MHz for and effective clock of 4000MHz... or the HD5870 with 1200MHz for the memory for an effective clock of 4800MHz... so.... anyone?
Matthew quoted the GTX 480 memory as 1848MHz- which is it's DDR (Dual Data Rate). Doubling this will give you it's "effective" rate (i.e. 3696MHz). Which is lower than the HD5xxx series but on a wider memory bus, so peak bandwidth is actually fairly similar.
A basic equation for the GTX 480 would be:
924MHz clock x 4 (DDR doubled) x 384 bit bus / 8 bits (1 byte) = 177408 Mb/sec
177408Mb / 1024 (Mb per Gb) = 173.25Gb/sec (173.4 if you round the effective rate to an even 3800MHz)

and for the HD 5870...

1200MHz clock x 4 x 256 bit bus / 8 = 153600 Mb/sec / 1024 = 150Gb/sec

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