Final words & conclusion

The Verdict

Make no mistake, what we have shown you here today is not really something we can recommend with the generic (reference based aircooled) GeForce GTX 480 unless you want to fool and play around a little of course. To compensate the additional voltage and thus additional heat coming from the GPU you'll need to increase the fan rotation of the graphics card which on its end increases the noise levels of the cooler coming from already loud to now unheard proportions.

This article serves merely of an indication what the GeForce GTX 480 has in store. If we set aside temperatures and noise levels, then we can only conclude that in the GPU itself there definitely is a lot of potential for much higher clock frequencies. Giving the card a dash of more voltage brought it close to 850 MHz on the core, nearing in on 1700 MHz in the shaders. So that fact by itself is promising.

Right now what the GTX 480 really needs are custom cooling solutions that will bring down temperatures and noise levels. First in line will obviously be liquid cooled versions of the cards. We already have the Danger Den block in the lab and once you install such a block(and apply decent water cooling, the temperatures and noise levels will become really interesting. Once cooling has been solved, the sky is the limit really. In fact we would not be surprised to see even higher clocks once we can get these high temperatures under control, it looks promising alright. More on that in a later article though.

With what we've shown today we see 15 to 20% performance increases on what is already the fastest single GPU based graphics card on the globe.

We see a lot of overclocking potential with the GeForce GTX 480 .. but better cooling will be a very specific requirement alright. We hope you enjoyed this little extra article / guide.

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