The NVIDIA GTX 480 is the first DirectX 11 card to market. The GTX 480 is powered by NVIDIA’s new GF100 FERMI processor . Fermi is a radically new architecture, consisting of 3.2 billion transistors , 480 stream processors, 60 texture units, 48 raster operator units, and 1536MB of GDDR5 memory connected by a 384-bit bus.
Specifications
Graphics chip GeForce GTX 480
Clock Speed 700MHz
Shader Clock 1401MHz
Memory clock 3696MHz
Streaming Processors 480 SPs
Memory Bus 384-bit
Memory Bandwidth 177.4GB/s
Memory Size 1536MB
Fabrication process 40nm
Transistors 3200 million

Looking at the box we first see a very powerful knight in armor on a mount. next we see “50% Faster Voltage Tweak” Voltage Tweak is a feature in the Smart Doctor software for increasing GPU voltage for enhanced overclocking of the graphics card. You will also see the logos for DirectX 11, NVIDIA CUDA, Phys X, and the 1536MB of onboard Video Memory


On the back of the box we find information detailing the features of the card along with recommended system requirements. We also find brief description of the ASUS Voltage Tweak software and a preview of two free apps included, Design Garage and Supersonic sled which highlight the advanced rendering technology of the Fermi GPU.


Inside the retail packaging we find a fancy black box topped with a beautiful golden ASUS logo.

Inside the first inner box there are two smaller elegant boxes which house the accessories.

The left box houses the accessories, DVI to HDMI converter, DVI to VGA Converter, and a dual Molex to 6Pin PCIe power cable, documentation, support CDs. The box on the right is empty, simply used as space filler.



Under the right side box is where you are going to find the card in its protective foam enclosure snuggly fit for shipping

The front of the ASUS ENGTX480 is where the air intake for the coming system is located. The fan shroud is extended to the I/O plate in order to exhaust the cards heat out of the PC case.

On the back side of the ASUS GeForce GTX 480 video card we can see the massive amount of surface mount components on the cards PCB. On the left side you will see two holes in the PCB, The holes are for additional airflow into the cards blower fan. The bracket is used to prevent any flexing of the PCB that might compromise the heats sinks contact with the thermal zones. in the upper right corner we see a sdual SLI connectors enabling the support for 2-Way SLI, 3-Way SLI, and the all mighty 4-Way SLI

On the top of the card we see the massive heat pipes used for removing heat from the GPU core. On the left of the card there is a exhaust vent for the cooling system, this is required because the single slot exhaust vent on the card is not large enough for adequate air flow. On the right side we see the 8Pin PCIe and 6Pin PCIe auxiliary power inputs. The ASUS GeForce GTX 480 video card requires a 600 Watt or greater power supply with at least 42 Amps on the +12 volt rail. If you want to run SLI it is recommended to use at least a 750 Watt power supply as suggested by NVIDIA. Just below the PCIe power connectors we find the “GeForce” logo.

Along the bottom of the card we see it is fully enclosed in a plastic housing, this is to help guide the incoming air through the cooling fins of the heat sink.


The ASUS GTX 480 graphics card has two dual-link DVI-I outputs and a mini-HDMI output. Above the connectors we see the main thermal exhaust vent for the graphics cooling system.


Removal of screws in not required to pull off the fan shroud

With the shroud removed we see the massive heat sink for the GPU and blower fan.

The ASUS GTX 480 TOP uses four spring retention screws to securely mount the cooling assembly to the GPU.

The GTX480 cooling system has five large 8mm copper heat pipes as part of the heat sink design. The heat pipes are sanded to a flat surface for optimal contact between the heat pipes and the GPU. Heat pipes transfer the heat directly from the GPU core to the cooling fins,.This method of direct heat pipe contact boosts lower temperatures than traditional designs lacking the use of heat pipes.


Along the top of the cards PCB there is a black metal support bracket, this bracket provides support for the cards PCB and helps prevent flexing of the board and increases the cards durability and reliability. It also is the mounting system for the cooling fan, as well as the heat sink for voltage drivers, voltage regulators, and memory modules.



Under the cooling assembly we see the heart of the NVIDIA GTX 480. There are 12 128MB Samsung DDR5 memory modules soldered to the board for a total of 1536MB of Memory, ASUS has used high quality solid-state capacitors and chokes. The GTX480 has 6 Phase GPU Core power design and 2 phase power for the GPU memory. The extra power phases help with energy efficiency, power quality and overclocking potential as well as reliability of the video card.