Gadgetory

so after many trials and tribulations you can actually click here to see how I got my GeForce GTX 480 on launch day I finally have one today I have the PNY accelerate performance Edition GeForce GTX 480 these cards are rarer than hen's teeth but I did manage to get my hands on one so I'm going to be opening it for your unboxing pleasure so let's start with what's on the outside of the box first of all down at the bottom you can see that this has 1536 megabytes of gddr5 memory this is in videos first video card with gddr5 on the high end now they actually have a lull in GPU that uses it but it's not it doesn't make a difference at that point anyway so this is the fastest memory card from Nvidia ever you've got 3d vision surround so if you actually have to DT X 480 s you cannot only run surround with 3 monitors but you can do it in 3d with the Nvidia 3d glasses next we have support for physics in CUDA these are nothing new but they're still being continued with and obviously nvidia sli support now let's oh yeah pin Y also includes 5 free bonus saw movie downloads from PN why.com slash movies so you should check that out that's something that I don't think anyone else is offering with their GTX 480 on the back we've got the basic specifications and key features as well as minimum system requirements so there's going to be some interesting stuff in here first of all specifications can you get a look at that so that people can just read it and freeze the frame if they want to is that good enough let's just call that good enough ok key features DirectX 11 this is a videos first DirectX 11 card everything else here is pretty much stuff I've already covered at the front or stuff that's just being carried over from previous cards minimum system requirements this one's interesting because Nvidia actually recommends a minimum 600 watt or greater system power supply with a minimum 12 volt current rating of 42 ms so that means that if you're running just a bare-bones system other than that you will need to have at least one 42 amps on your 12 volt rail you should be using a modern power supply with this card if you're not then that's absolutely crazy alright let's keep on moving and contents we'll get to that when we actually open the contents of the package so I am breaking the seal on the GTX 480 here we go peel that back and there is a paper sleeve oh no hey check this out hi class that is a cardboard sleeve not a paper sleeve you can tell it's a premium card when okay the next thing we find inside is a little scrap of paper I'm guessing that's nothing then we have an installation CD you should download the latest drivers often video comm don't even use this next we have a GeForce graphics card QuickStart guide from PNY so let's see they're just showing you all the different basic kinds of connectors that you might find on your video card and they're giving you some instructions on how to install them in your case all right Thank You P&Y for covering that for us next we have a two molex to one PCI Express 6 pin adapter although frankly if you don't have a power supply that has the required connectors for this then you should just buy one because you don't want to be you don't want to be running something like this with a lousy power supply if your power supply blows up it can take a lot of other stuff with it then we have a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter so I'll show you why you need that in just a second and then one DVI to VGA adapter alright so let's get the foam off here and let's get this baby opened there we are so the first thing you notice about it is that the whole front of the card I mean this is not a shiny plastic this is metal this is heatsink here guys this is one hot card so that means that you've got all of this extra surface area that you normally wouldn't have on a video card dedicated to dissipating heat with any incidental airflow that comes over the card not only that but compared to a TI's Radeon HD series which I happen to have one of here you can see that the back panel uses the full length of the adjacent PCI slot for cooling and ventilation versus ATI cutting off half of it alright the next thing we've got a cable here I told you I tell you why you need a mini HDMI connector that's why now you can only actually can two of these three at a time so each card can output to two displays but this way you can do hdmi and DVI or DVI and DVI alright let's go around - why don't we do the top of the card next those are thick heat pipes I have never seen a heat pipe this thick on a stock cooler for a graphics card not one not two not three but four heat pipes coming out for him right over where the GPU core is so you can see right here that's where that large GTX 480 chip is and that's where all of the heat pipes go because really there's nothing else on here except maybe the voltage regulators and this that wow that's actually stuck on there bizarre except the voltage regulators that actually needs a lot of cooling so let's go around to the bottom of the card this is still a standard PCI Express - card so that means it's gonna fit into any PCI Express 1.0 1.1 1.1 a or PCI Express 2.0 motherboard around the back you see we find some of the voltage regulator regulation components and the rest of them seem to be sitting down in TC under the fan right there so those are actually getting direct airflow right from the fan when it's spinning and videos using their their standard kind of fan they've been using since wow the 8800 series I guess they've been using this particular blower fan okay another thing that I want to point out about this card right off the bat is that this is again in line with the power requirements it requires not only one PCI Express 6-pin connector not an additional PCI Express six pin connector but a six pin and an eight pin PCI Express connector so you need a serious power supply to run this card and I think that pretty much does it for my unboxing oh you know what else I should mention PNY has actually just added lifetime warranty to their there tick boxes on the both sides of their cards so the geforce gtx 470 and 480 from PNY both feature our lifetime warranty thank you for checking out my unboxing