Gadgetory

all right so we've waited months for this card to finally be ready in just a few weeks ago we finally got to see the actual performance numbers from a bunch of different movie websites Harbour connects included check it out now virtually the card itself wasn't actually ready at the time of release so we've had to wait a couple weeks to get our hands on it but here it is the first one hit store shelves from PN watt and with companies like XFX stepping out of the race it's nice to see a few other companies sort of stepping up and offering their cards so we're gonna unbox it take a quick look action before we get there highlight some things on the boxes cardboard sleeve nothing too important on the front we have all the technologies down the bottom three divisions surround physics CUDA SLI all that fun stuff on the back a bunch of PR stuff the specifications more of the of the technologies you can check the specs out at the end of the video now one thing that I do want to highlight is the minimum system requirements for this card one thing that stands out is the minimum 600 watt or greater power supply with 42 amps on the 12 volt rail that is a serious power supply and we're not talking you're cheap $20 eBay power supply either you need to have something that is quality to be able to power this thing the other thing they suggest is about 2 gigs of system memory with four gigs recommended so you need a fairly we're not a fairly high end but you need a fairly good mid range system with a lot of power in order to complement this thing now the other thing about PNY is they do now offer a lifetime warranty which is great to see more companies jumping on that bandwagon and supporting their cards for longer you know standing behind their work otherwise there really isn't too much important on it so let's actually take a look at the real goods what we have here just a quick start guide which basically shows you how to install the video card into your system and how to install drivers what to do next on the list we have the video card drivers themselves now these are using the 1/9 7.03 drivers and media has released as of april 9th the one nine seven four one i believe the number is drivers so head over to an medias website if you add this card and download those as far as accessories vga to DVI adapter pretty standard PCI 2 or PCI power and molex adapters again pretty standard now this is a difference we have the mini-hdmi into like s regular HDMI because that is actually an output featured on the card itself let's get to the meat of this thing we have the GTX 480 from PNY it's definitely fairly beefy a little weighty to which you'll see on the top is we have a solid metal cover that is over the heatsink which is actually fairly shiny the little fingerprint e we have our fan situated at the back of the card and we also have air intake ports at the back and then on the PCB itself you'll actually notice that there is holes in the PCB in order to allow for more ventilation on the side we have the 6 pin PCI power and an 8 pin PCI power so this thing is serious and we also have four we have four copper heat pipes here nickel plated and that is to transfer heat from the chip on to or into the rather heat fins that word we're gonna open it up and see those in a second as far as outputs go we have the dual DVI and there is also an HDMI connection and then a bottom spot specifically or only for venting now surprisingly there isn't actually aside from this on the side here and up front there isn't a lot of other venting on it it's all pretty enclosed so we're gonna take off the shroud and actually take a look at the card underneath alright so taking off our shroud was actually surprisingly easy it's just a little plastic thing there with a bunch of clips now this thing I don't know whether to be scared by it or rather impressed we have this sort of turbine looking fan at the back here which is fairly thick and there's also this solid metal plate that extends over the VRMs and the RAM chips that extends from the all across the PCB so everything is going to be kept cool and we have this meaty metal heatsink up at the front as you can see it's a fairly dense I believe it's aluminum thin there a that extends pretty much three-quarters or two-thirds the length of the card here and one thing I should correct myself on is there is four four copper heat pipes that extrude from the card but there's actually if you can see it there a fifth that is sort of tucked away inside now these go straight through the metal heatsink they come out the side and that is how the chip is going to dissipate its heat other than that that is pretty much much the cooling system Nvidia so of breaking new ground with this you haven't really seen I can't say I've really seen a video card that uses heat pipes in order to transfer heat so it's a little bit of an experiment for them but if you've seen any of the reviews you know that something this beefy is well it's really going to be needed one other point I should make is that the GTX 480 is actually a standard 10.5 inches long which is more of an ATX standard and he's going to fit in a majority of cases and what we saw with the HD 5870 from ETI is the fact that it's a little over 11 inches long and many cases won't support it and then you have this brute back here which is about 12 and a half inches long and finding a case to fit that is actually incredibly difficult you find a lot of users wind up having to buy a whole new case just to fit the card when are we doing some gameplay videos testing out some benchmarks and doing some overclocking with this card in the next few videos so be sure to check back thanks for watching you