Nvidia admits GTX480 runs hot

Can't hide from facts.

Nvidia has admitted what most every review has already said - its GTX480 chip uses "a lot of power".

In a blog post, Nvidia's Drew Henry said that the chip designer had "heard [users] concerns" with regard to power and heat. He went on to explain that a "high performance" GPU such as the GTX480 will "consume a lot of power" in order to enable "performance and features".

The Green Goblin's Fermi chip, a source of much embarrassment to the firm, finally shipped last week in GTX470 and GTX480 graphics cards. Reviews generally put the top end GTX480 slightly ahead of AMD's Radeon HD 5870 but it was clear to see that Nvidia's latest GPU chips were running excruciatingly hot. Reviewers found their units running close to 100° C when putting the cards through their paces.

The content of Henry's post might sound like an April Fool's joke, but sadly for the firm, too many reviews prove it is fact. While chip design is always a tradeoff, Nvidia clearly pushed the limits trying to shove these huge monolithic GPU chips out the door. Our testing - which you can read about in the next issue of Atomic, onsale next week - proves much the same, and the long-story made short version is that the performance increase from the GTX480 is not great enough to offset the card's cost or heat-burden.

Henry finishes off by saying that the chip is indeed designed to run at these high temperatures and doing so has no negative effects on life expectancy. That might very well be true but really it still remains to be seen, and meanwhile it will have negative effects on your electricity bills, and certainly won't help an overclocked rig already running hot.

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25 Comments

BUFF1974 Apr 6, 2010 10:58 AM	haha 9800gx2 in quad sli was the best gpu i had untill i went ati 5870 runs smooth/cool no probs at all, alot cheaper than anyhting nvidia can bring out and same performance a few percent gain in performance is not worth mentioning! lol nvidia have lost ther plot, i cant see a reason to justifiy there over priced gpu's when not much of a performance differance with ati. ATI FTW
RaRaDawg Apr 6, 2010 12:00 PM	100 degrees! eek! Round up the saucepan guys, let's cook some eggs!
somemadcaaant Apr 6, 2010 12:00 PM	Sweat spot is 5850 crossfire for less dollars, better power consumption, more video ram and 15 to 20 fps on top of any GTX480. Can't be beaten.
somemadcaaant Apr 6, 2010 12:01 PM	Sweet even.
Splinter277 Apr 6, 2010 1:29 PM	Nvidia's idea of diversification: Create toaster division
Jeruselem Apr 6, 2010 1:42 PM	Cooky breaky while you shoot people playing COD, :D
sirtrancealot Apr 6, 2010 2:52 PM	yup my new 5850 runs cooler than my old 8800GT did. much quieter too.. hate to even think what sort of racket an 480GTX would make in my case!
nukejockey Apr 6, 2010 3:54 PM	somemadcaaant, 2 5850s have less vram than a single gtx480, 2 1gb cards is still only 1gb Vram.
cheozuka Apr 6, 2010 6:30 PM	temps in excess of 70c are not really acceptable IMO. When gaming this will encrease the avg room temperature based on a 4X3m room by up to 10c in a couple of hours in Australia with no Air Con. ( sadly I am in this boat) The other negative is when running SLi, or perhaps crossfire ( i can only comment on SLi first hand) I find that sound cards sandwhiched between hot gpu's can run into issues. hopefully the next (485?) or die shrink equivalent of the 480 core will run considerably cooler. though I think 10-15c is all we can expect. 85c is still too hot!
somemadcaaant Apr 6, 2010 6:56 PM	nukejockey: Dude you will have to explain your version of "VRam",since as far as I am aware the GTX480 has only 1536mb of usable Video Memory... the 5850's have 1gb each, In CF all memory is allocated obviously to be used and that's 1gb + 1gb = 2gb. Prove me wrong If I am mistaken... SMC.
nukejockey Apr 6, 2010 8:58 PM	cheozuka, 2 5850s sandwiched together still run cooler than a single gtx480, like an extra 5-10c depending on ambient (1st card is hotter, obviously) somemadcaaant, you are wrong, I cant be bothered finding an example for you, but if you do your own research you will find that in a crossfire setup, both cards need to have identical data on the ram for them to function. So 2 1gb cards will still only function as 1gb. Google it.
markand_01 Apr 7, 2010 8:07 AM	so nukejockey if you used say a Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 2GB in your first slot and a normal sapphire 5850 1gb in the second would that work ? have no experence with Sli.
nukejockey Apr 7, 2010 8:19 AM	As far as I know, it would limit the 2gb card to 1gb. Much like using a 512mb 4870 with a 1gb 4870 would limit you to 512mb.
brumby92 Apr 7, 2010 3:30 PM	nukejockey: that is true, but it still gives a total of 1gb. much like 2 cards with 1gb of vram each gives a total of 2gb.
TheFrunj Apr 7, 2010 4:18 PM	brumby, the physical total of memory with two 1GB cards is indeed 2GB. However, they can't use it as a single contiguous space, as each core needs access to the same texture information. Therefore, each 1GB card has a mirrored image of the other card - giving you 2GB, but effectively only 1GB usable.
nukejockey Apr 7, 2010 5:47 PM	Thank you frunjy, you have conveyed to these people what I could not :P
TheFrunj Apr 7, 2010 10:25 PM	It's how I roll :P
brumby92 Apr 7, 2010 11:47 PM	meh. I have 2 4850's, and it runs a large monitor much better than a single 4850 did.
brumby92 Apr 8, 2010 12:01 AM	but that's 1gb per card. the game/application can and will use a total of 2gb. So it can run larger textures on larger resolutions and what not.
TheFrunj Apr 8, 2010 8:15 AM	The game/application stores extra textures and gamedata in system memory, too :)
nukejockey Apr 8, 2010 9:06 AM	Sigh. Why argue about this when you're wrong -.- You are aware the frunj is the tech writer for this mag right?
somemadcaaant Apr 8, 2010 10:26 AM	Aye we’re not arguing here, just trying to track down the info with out having to research, what a lazy bunch we are lol so confusing and doesn't sound efficient to me at all, I work too hard to goggle sites all day at work. Sounds like it’s doing double the work. Obviously works somehow since I get almost exactly double the performance compared to one card from my own tests. I wonder if SLI and crossfire use the same method… shit now I’m wanting to research it more(TheFrunj can Atomic do an article for us lazy folk?). At any rate, to what ever extent, thanx for the info. SMC.
nukejockey Apr 8, 2010 11:53 AM	Crossfire usually has gains of anywhere from 10%-50%+ because you have 2 cards sharing the work load, however to work together they need to have exactly the same information stored in their ram. SLI seems to be even better (some GTX480 reviews were showing 100% gains in SLI) But they both have the same downfall, the ram on both cards must have exactly the same data on it, which means that it is not possible for 2 cards to store seperate data from each other to increase the amount of available vram.
brumby92 Apr 9, 2010 1:03 PM	aaaaahh. ok. so its the same file mirrored. thanks. on average i'd say I get a 50% increase. Some games like cod4 I've gotten 100%.
Goonit Apr 9, 2010 4:43 PM	Silly Billy's :) I still want 2. Get some nice waterblocks on them you wont see 50c on those suckers. Probably still make my study an oven but all highend cards lately would underload. I'll probably stick with 2x GTX 285s till they reduce the power consumption couldn't give a rats about heat tbh, its a given with such a large and powerful single GPU.

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Atomic Magazine

Issue: 137 | June, 2012

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.

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