Just got my GTX 480

[XGUNTHERC]

Just got my GTX 480, Now under Water!

Hey everyone.. I wanted to post up here to let everyone know that I just got my new Gigabyte GTX 480 Video card. and boy is it a beauty.

I ordered an eVGA GTX 480 from Amazon and they still have not mentioned a word about when it will ship. so I got sick of waiting and snagged the 480 from Newegg. if you refresh the page all day they've got a few in stock that sell out in minutes each day since last Thursday.. so go to Newegg.com if you want a GTX 480 or 470, PNY.com has 480's ONLY, 470's are backordered. Tigerdirect.com also has got them off and on the last 2 days. I'd watch there also. and mwave.com has the 470's if you wanna pay a $20 dollar premium to get it now.

So, I'll do a formal review and all that good stuff later.. but for now I wanna mention the TEMPS are nothing that all the reviewers said it was. it idles in the 46c area. Lower than my GTX 260, and for sure lower than my 260's in SLI. it's a great card, well built and the heatpipes are SWEET.

the card gets HOT HOT HOT said all the reviewers.. well yes it does. but if you leave the fan on stock 44% then the card gets really really hot (above 90C, not unusual for top of the line GPU's though) and then the fan cranks to 90% to adjust for it and it gets really loud. So if you use your head and use eVGA Precision, or MSI Afterburner and manually set the fan speed to say 65% the temps are much more manageable and I've YET to see it go over 85C... (my brothers GTX 285 reaches 85c all the time so it's nothing new to graphics cards)

Now for some Eye Candy! (Click to Enlarge)




and this last photo cuz the angle is really cool.


PROOF!


PROOF NOW WITH SLI


Uploaded with ImageShack.us


I just got it today. I've been able to overclock it past the stock clocks of 701 Mhz all the way up to 851 Mhz and get a solid increase in performance in all area's.. With some voltage tweaks all the way up to 900 Mhz Core clock is possible. I'll be doing this later also.

The card rocks, it's very good and with driver updates it will continue to be the top single GPU graphics card as nvidia is always improving there lead with driver updates.. if anyone has any questions let me know.
Thanks for reading!

 

[blackroseMD1]

Looks awesome...I think I might pick one up next month. Can't wait to read your review of it.

 

[CarlTR6]

Congratulations!! It surely does look nice. I am waiting to read your user review.

 

[Heroxoot]

Congratz on spending a lot of money faster than others! I heard these lil guys are hard to get your hands on. Good choice of brand I might add. Gigabyte/Sapphire> all.

 

[starwolf1336]

that was suppost to be mine

 

[XGUNTHERC]

well I'd rather get an eVGA, and I still am going to leave my pre-ordered eVGA 480 with amazon so when they do ship. (still don't know) I'll get an evga

I'd rather have eVGA than Gigabyte cuz they allow overclocking and modding. I'll be removing the heatsync and going water-cooling and i don't think gigabyte would approve. I've sent a 9800GT back to eVGA with only 3 screws in the heatsink and plastic cover cuz i lost it and they still RMA'd it. haha!

this card has much, much, much improved image quality over the 260. for sure, I can see it in windows, and games like Crysis MAXXED out at 1920x1200 looks amazing. Warhead on enthusiasts

 

[jr26]

Awesome man. I want one really bad but just can't drop that kind of cash at the moment on a gpu.

 

[XGUNTHERC]

well I sold my SLI 260's to help fund it... that got me close

 

[Heroxoot]

well I'd rather get an eVGA, and I still am going to leave my pre-ordered eVGA 480 with amazon so when they do ship. (still don't know) I'll get an evga

I'd rather have eVGA than Gigabyte cuz they allow overclocking and modding. I'll be removing the heatsync and going water-cooling and i don't think gigabyte would approve. I've sent a 9800GT back to eVGA with only 3 screws in the heatsink and plastic cover cuz i lost it and they still RMA'd it. haha!

this card has much, much, much improved image quality over the 260. for sure, I can see it in windows, and games like Crysis MAXXED out at 1920x1200 looks amazing. Warhead on enthusiasts

MSI after burner. Should work on this one too. It lets me OC my sapphire 4850 to 825mhz I think. But it would not let me adjust voltage, so I'm not sure.

 

[Zen00]

Voltage modding with Afterburner is determined by the card.

Though you can force it by editing the configuration file.

 

[mpcrsc562]

Not trying to be a wise-guy, but I gott ask...

Did you already have a high wattage power supply or did you find you needed to get a new one? And from your observations thus far, do you think you'll have any problems with heat within your case. Just curious. Seriously, not trying to be a smart-@$$ -- review sites have dinged that card on those two things and I wanted to know your take.

Congrats on snaggin' yours.

 

[pat247]

Congrats on the purchase. I was planning on getting a 480 but I stumbled onto the EVGA site when the preorders were being taken but the 480`s were already gone( lasted 20 min) so I snaged a 470 instead. I used the money I saved to help upgrade my processor from a E8400 to a QX9770. I received the 470 yesterday the QX9770 today and tomorrow I will do a clean install of Windows 7. So far I have been very pleased with the 470 and the temps are not nearly as bad as had been reported, 49 C idle, 61 C after 1 hour gaming.

 

[XGUNTHERC]

The review sites were all up in the nite.. the enthusiasts website overclock.net (reason for the OCN writing in my screenshot for the 480 club there) is a website all about computers. it's where I'm always posting..

There's many reviews of owners there, as well as a nvidia section that has a 470/480 gaming temps thread.

Personally, it's sitting idle right now at 44c... (thats nothing) my 260's idled at 47 and 48c.. and I just played about an hour of Just Cause all maxxed out and the highest it got was 79c.. now I know 79c sounds hot, but the 5870 gets around 75c gaming, and the GTX 280 did 90c while gaming. my original GTX 280 was hitting 96c while gaming. lol. and the GTX 295 gets even hotter.

All the review sites were using something called Furmark (it's a stability and overclocking utility to test the card can handle an EXTREME load, that way if it can pass furmark, it will be able to be stable in any game you play) and allllll the review sites used the EXTREME HEAT Furmark test that gets cards to there hottest point. so 91 and 96c load temps will NEVER happen while gaming i doubt.

Also all review sites used auto fan speed. it's set at auto to 44%. manually set it to something like 75% and you'll never have a temp problem whatsoever. even stock at 44% you wont, but it will get hot in games and the fan will ramp up loud to cover. I'd rather stay at 75% the entire time personally.

 

[mpcrsc562]

Personally, it's sitting idle right now at 44c... (thats nothing) my 260's idled at 47 and 48c.. and I just played about an hour of Just Cause all maxxed out and the highest it got was 79c.. now I know 79c sounds hot, but the 5870 gets around 75c gaming, and the GTX 280 did 90c while gaming. my original GTX 280 was hitting 96c while gaming. lol. and the GTX 295 gets even hotter.

That's nothing! My first gen 4870 idled at about 60C!
Again, congrats on your purchase.

So the war between Red and Green continues...

(time to update you system specs...)

 

[XGUNTHERC]

Not trying to be a wise-guy, but I gott ask...

Did you already have a high wattage power supply or did you find you needed to get a new one? And from your observations thus far, do you think you'll have any problems with heat within your case. Just curious. Seriously, not trying to be a smart-@$$ -- review sites have dinged that card on those two things and I wanted to know your take.

Congrats on snaggin' yours.

I already had a high powered PSU as I was running SLI 260's before.. and power rating aren't nearly as bad as people think.. you could run a Quad Core system with 3 Hard Drives, and 8 fans, and the GTX 480 all with a 600w psu with ease.

 

[jr26]

Congrats on the purchase. I was planning on getting a 480 but I stumbled onto the EVGA site when the preorders were being taken but the 480`s were already gone( lasted 20 min) so I snaged a 470 instead. I used the money I saved to help upgrade my processor from a E8400 to a QX9770. I received the 470 yesterday the QX9770 today and tomorrow I will do a clean install of Windows 7. So far I have been very pleased with the 470 and the temps are not nearly as bad as had been reported, 49 C idle, 61 C after 1 hour gaming.

I've seen a lot of reports of high temps but i'm curious if any of the reporters had high end cards before hand. Maybe they don't realize these cards do get warm and in most cases its perfectly normal. Also the fans typically don't speed up on their own until it reaches very high temps so you should get used to setting it your self for gaming. I run my GTX 260 @ 55% fan speed for gaming and it never goes much above 60 C. If I don't turn the fan up it will hit the lower 70s. Right now idle is 41 C. But my bedroom is in our basement so normally its cooler down here.

Then again some people just set out looking for anything they can find as a fault regardless if it truly is or not.

 

[XGUNTHERC]

yes your absolutely right.. some reviewers just wanted to trash it. but some didn't know better i don't think..

if your going to game, manually set it to something like 70% and you'll be good.. I mean this 480 does get hotter than my 260 did, but then it's more powerful then both of them combined so thats expected. Once you manually set the fan to something higher than the stock setting, the card stays cooler, and it doesn't get as loud cuz it doesn't get way hot and have to ramp up fan speeds.. the cards not as hot, loud, or power hungry as the reviewers made it out to be. but it is a little warm, and does suck some power. but less than my SLI was so I'm happy.

also I can crank the fan up to 72% and then once you go to 73% there's an audible difference. it's really odd that this happens at 73% I think 73% is where the largest RPM increase is, but idk.. the 480 is quieter than my 260 was, but once you get over about 75%.. it gets louder. but idle it's quieter than my 260's were. and I like that.

 

[jr26]

Yeah the 260 is noisy but I still like it

Soon as I got the cash though it will be the 480 unless I can get a 295 for a really good deal and put the rest towards a better processor(hopefully the 6 core amd will be out).

 

[Fumz]

Gunther, where have you been hiding man!!!

 

[XGUNTHERC]

FUMZ... how are ya. I've been around. lol. you still got that awesome avatar. I used to watch that over n over. haha

How are ya?

edit* ya jr the 295 is still a great card and you can get it for around $400 used now.. but it's not DX11 capable. if you want it I'd get a 470 instead.. they are solid. and can overclock to almost 480 specs. the Asus 470/480 come with a voltage tweaking app and my friend used it to get as high clocked as the 480 and had similar performance, but not quite. I'd get a 470 if you want to spend that much on a 295