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Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 Super Overclock heads to retail

by Parm Mann on 2 November 2010, 13:53

Tags: Gigabyte (TPE:2376)

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We're big fans of Gigabyte's Super Overclock range of graphics cards - both the GTX 470 SOC and GTX 460 SOC have recently impressed - but we've been patiently awaiting the arrival of the grand daddy of them all, the Super Overclock'd GTX 480.

We caught a glimpse of the card back in September, and it had all the ingredients to become the best air-cooled GTX 480 on the market.

With a cherry-picked GPU factory-overclocked to 820MHz (up from 700MHz) and a 1,536MB GDDR5 frame buffer raised from 3,696MHz to 3,800MHz, performance should be excellent. And heat, noise and power consumption shouldn't be a problem, either, as Gigabyte claims its use of a WindForce 3X cooler and Ultra Durable components results in over a 10 per cent reduction on all accounts.

Despite the healthy out-the-box frequencies, the card is of course targeting the enthusiast who wants more. To the effect, Gigabyte arms the GTX 480 SOC with a 14-phase PWM (12 for GPU, two for memory) and two on-board BIOSes; the standard SOC BIOS and an LN2 BIOS designed to better withstand sub-zero overclocking.

The card's starting to appear at European retailers priced at around €440 (roughly £385), but here's the bad news: NVIDIA's new-and-improved GTX 580 looks set to become official next week, and if the price is right, the soon-to-be-old GTX 480 may lose its appeal.



HEXUS Forums :: 1 Comment

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i just can't see the point in a 480 anymore
dual 460s are over £100 cheaper, cooler, and perform a lot better
the old argument of heat and noise or extra power is useless too as they beat it on all accounts
and SLI performance is so good nowadays!
only have 1 PCI slot ? with the money you spend you can buy a new motherboard too! ha

i suppose though those that want to game with all settings maxed at 2560x1600 will need this sort of rig, and if you can afford that monitor then the cost of these won't be too much of an issue :P