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GeForce GTX 480 Box Shot

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Why the whining about needing 42 amps on the +12V rail? You understand this is a system wide recommendation, right? Just like the 600W recommendation is also a system wide suggestion, right?

If you think you need 42A on one rail just to supply the video card, that'd be just over 500W, just for the card.

No, a good little 650W multi railed power supply would run that card well. Take the Antec Earthwatts 650. Three +12V rails, 22A, 22A, 25A on them. The last listed is dedicated to the pair of PCI-e connectors it has. So those two connectors have available to them 25A, or 300W. That's 300W through the PCI-e connectors to the video card, and that doesn't include the 75W available through the PCI-e slot. So that's 375W available to it.

You cannot tell me that this card will require more than 375W to function.....should be more like 300W to gain certification for it. So, a half decently constructed multiple railed power supply should be more than capable to run it.
 
Eh guys, are you interpreting the 42Amp requirement correctly?

The card can't exceed ATX spec of 300 Watts, I believe, so that's 300/12 = 25Amps max draw

The 42Amps thing is to filter out crapy overrated '600Watt' psu's that in reality supply way below that on the 600 Watts on the 12V rails and the rest of the psu rating is made up on the 3V and 5V lines.

I don't know but think of some older psu designs that were overated like Ultras for example?
 
This card will probably be $400 or more, priced way out of most peoples budget. I'll be looking forward to the mid range Nvidia cards later this year, the ones around $200-250.
 
Keysplayr said:
I would think so to. Requirements have historically been overstated for safety margins.
I mean, GTX280 was supposed to need 500 or 550W PSU? But I ran it fine for months on a 435W Enermax.
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Yeah I would take these requirements with a grain of salt. 40amps on the 12v rail is 480 watts, so assuming they dont go over 300w for a single card, they're giving the rest of your system 180w, which is a lot less than most people's CPU + other components draw at load. Maybe if you had an OC'd i7, but afaik the actual power draw of most quad cores is around 100w. If we come back to reality and say 225w for the GTX 480 and 120w for the rest of the system, it'd probably run fine on a good 450-500w psu.
 
now now they'll probably drop or substitute the x. Thats (at least so far) been reserved for actual current gen tech.

the 600watt requirements is high but not really out of line with what I was expecting. AMD requires a 650 watt power supply for the 5970 which pulls ~290 watts. Means fermi is probably drawing ~250-~280 watts. Now as long as fermi performance lands closer to a 5970 than a 5870 they're fine. If its closer to the latter well...
 
Right. I'm running a GTX 295 on an older OCZ 1010w PS (on a loaded setup no less, 3burners/4hds, etc) and it works absolutely fine. It only has 72A altogether, and I'd be mighty surprised if a GTX 480 didn't run on it.
 
Everyone seems to be missing something. Why aren't the damn specs on the box?!?
We want details like amount of memory, memory speeds, and clockspeeds.
 
Blue Shift said:
Wait, what? Nice catch; that sucks a**.
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I don't know. It might indeed force some people to upgrade their mobo, but at the price the card will most likely end up, I'm pretty sure the target segment will already have that. On the plus side, if the card requires that much bandwidth, maybe the performances are really impressive.

One field I'm less familiar with, however, is how is it going to affect SLI? I thought SLI was turning the slots to 2 x8 lanes, or is that only with the LGA 1156 socket? Or am I completely mistaken?
 
blanketyblank said:
Everyone seems to be missing something. Why aren't the damn specs on the box?!?
We want details like amount of memory, memory speeds, and clockspeeds.
Click to expand...

Like mentioned, they did provide some details about memory. I'm guessing the clockspeeds were intentionally left off the box or out of the shot at CeBit.
 
Wait, something else! It has two DVI ports and a mini-HDMI!

That could mean single-card 3-D surround?
 
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Fun with numbers.. what's your guess on price:

1) $500-$549
2) $550-$599
3) $600-$649
4) $650-$699
5) $700-$749

Yea it's hard without performance data but take a guess. I say #4
 
Voo said:
Though fermi would mean a new PSU for a LOT of people which also costs some money.

I'm not that shocked about the 600W (ok for a single GPU that's an awful lot..), but the 42amp on the 12v rail..
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Good thing I don't buy cheap ass power supplies.
 
This is going to be one power-sucking beast, zero question about it. 😱
Even taking the over-recommending AMD/nV always do for PSUs, 600W/42A is a lot.

No displayport?
So nV is not going to support displayport?!

Also, i wonder if it'll handle three displays at once, or more likely, just two. :\
 
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Third, read the label closer. Not only does it require a 600W PSU, it also requires a 42 amp 12v rail. For all of those with multi-rail PSUs, they're going to have a problem.
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That is crazy. Just so you guys know, 42A on the 12V rail is roughly 500W by itself.
 
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