Asus ENGTX480/2DI/1536MD5
The final board used in this review is Asus’ version of the GTX 480. There is really not a whole lot of customization being done on the board design or the cooling solution. This is not exactly a “sticker version” of the card either. As most may or may not know, the first several months that NVIDIA introduces a card, they get a large manufacturer like Mitac to make thousands of cards for launch. At launch NVIDIA ships these cards to their board partners, where a sticker is applied that identifies whose card it is. After the first few months, the board partners start manufacturing these cards themselves. While many might follow the reference design to the letter, others might swap around electrical components and essentially create a version that is all their own. Some might include less expensive materials or components, while others will go the other way and include components with improved specifications or better performance under a higher temperature load.
A slightly different packaging motif for the GTX 480 compared to its smaller siblings.
This particular board does appear to be an Asus specified version with some custom components on there. It also includes the ability to increase the voltage to the GPU, which *should* allow for slightly higher overclocks. The GTX 480 features 48 ROPS and 480 Cuda Cores. It has a core clock of 700 MHz and a hot clock of 1400 MHz for the shaders. It features a 384 bit memory bus which runs GDDR-5 at 924 MHz (3696 effective) giving it a massive 177.4 GB/sec of bandwidth. It also feeds in 1536 MB of memory, which is more than adequate for pretty much every game out there.
Unlike the previous cards, the GTX 480 shares the same reference cooler as other manufacturers. Don’t touch the exposed metal when the card is running though…
The board can be found for around $370 after rebate, which is a fair price considering the performance and features. It has a 3 year warranty, and Asus has a pretty good reputation for support.
Nothing to see here, keep moving.
Overclocking on this board is pretty much a non-starter. The amount of power it pulls plus the amount of heat it produces essentially limits how far the card can overclock. Unless a user has extremely good cooling, or doesn’t mind the jet turbine sound the card makes when under heavy load, then clocking upwards of 750 MHz is entirely possible. I just don’t recommend it though. The GTX 480 was cutting it pretty close to the ragged edge in the first place, and overclocking it just is not a fantastic idea. Mileage will vary from user to user though.
Four! I count four heatpipes. Hahahahahaha. Thank goodness it all exhausts out the back of the computer.
The GTX 480 is around the same performance level as the GTX 570, and they cost nearly the same as well. The one edge that the GTX 480 has over the 570 is that of memory. The 570 only features the 320 bit memory bus combined with 1280 MB frame buffer. This gives the GTX 480 a slight edge here, and the extra memory could be helpful in some rather strenuous upcoming games.
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