NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Overclocking with Voltage Adjustment

tincart

Senior member
Apr 15, 2010
630
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Definitely a beast in terms of performance. Sadly, what this shows me is Fermi as a missed opportunity, at least so far. If a future revision can increase clocks without requiring 100% fan speed or installing a water-block for cooling, nV would have a very commanding product for us.

Impractical, as the reviewer says, but impressive nonetheless.
 

SlowSpyder

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
17,305
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Based on the 250 watt TDP and what many reviewers found as actual, I thought the GTX480 was already overclocked and had the power use turned up from the factory. :)

Seriously, I don't know if they needed a bit more voltag or what, but they didn't get much further then a lot of sites got on stock voltage. I have to think that heat may be holding their overclock back.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think Fermi is a big let down... but, I think the architecture gives them a great place to work from, it obviously has a lot of potential. Future products based on this architecture will probably be very impressive. Sort of like the Radeon 2900 was for AMD, a let down but a great spring board. It seems they feel the same based on their conclusion.
 
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Madcatatlas

Golden Member
Feb 22, 2010
1,155
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Wow the 480 overclocks like a beast.. I do envy you watercoolers as i really couldnt bear 82db
 

thilanliyan

Lifer
Jun 21, 2005
11,848
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For me, the GTX 470/480 cards would be so tempting if it wasn't for the very high power consumption especially since I am watercooling and would definitely overclock. I don't think my WC system could handle the amount of heat the cards would put out once overclocked since I'm using low speed fans. Here's hoping for a refresh soon.
 

MrK6

Diamond Member
Aug 9, 2004
4,458
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Lol @ 15MHz. The GTX 480 needs water. They got some decent scaling in some games, but this architecture just tanks on 40nm. Hypothesizing here, but they're either going to have to chop some stuff out of the chip or really get on TSMC's ass about a better process.
 

Tempered81

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2007
6,374
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Nice performance on the 480. It's gaining about 20% performance with that OC, and handles 8XAA really well. Overclocked, tweaktown has GTX480 peaking at 130 watts more than a stock 5970.

W1zzard measures the 5970 peaking at ~ 305 watts (and the 4870x2 @ 380w). This overclocked & overvolted GTX480 has to be peaking at ~ 430 watts all by itself through a 6pin, 8pin & pci-e slot. Even though the 6pin is spec'd to operate safely at ~75 watts, it can easily & unsafely do 150+ watts. Pci-E slots rated at 75 watts can do almost ~ 90-95 watts, and the 8-pin rated at 150 has to be massively overloaded as well (~ 185-190 watts) to reach a total of ~ 430. 45% power overload from spec, and %60 power overload from TDP. hahah

Insane and dangerous. I bet the PSU wires are warm & softening the insulators... haha.
 

nitromullet

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2004
9,031
36
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Interesting...

The performance gain for a 841/1682/4200 GTX 480 compared to a stock 480 is about the same difference as that between a GTX 480 and 470... Makes me wonder how high a GTX 470 can go, and if it can meet/beat a GTX 480.

From looking at the clock speeds between them:

841/1682/4200 - GTX 480 OC

700/1401/3696 - GTX 480

607/1215/3348 - GTX 470

...it looks like if you could get the 470 to 480 clocks, you could come close. You can buy one hell of a cooler for $150...
 
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thilanliyan

Lifer
Jun 21, 2005
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Power consumption of the cards in SLI is just insane:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_SLI/26.html

624w just for the cards!!! They are going to struggle to get an X2 version out and keep it within 300w if they're already breaking 300w with a single card. Chopping up the specs and underclocking 2 GPUs to get around 300w will probably mean performance will be around an OCed GTX480. A die shrink will hopefully fix that issue.

EDIT: Just to clarify, that 624w is for Furmark.
 
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SHAQ

Senior member
Aug 5, 2002
738
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I can't wait until they release this version. One of my cards needs a boost.
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,209
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Power consumption of the cards in SLI is just insane:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_SLI/26.html

624w just for the cards!!! They are going to struggle to get an X2 version out and keep it within 300w if they're already breaking 300w with a single card. Chopping up the specs and underclocking 2 GPUs to get around 300w will probably mean performance will be around an OCed GTX480. A die shrink will hopefully fix that issue.

Thilan, if you're going to keep mentioning this in various threads, you might take an extra second to say that this is running stress testing apps like Furmark. Peak SLI'd 480's are under 500W. Actually they say 472W.
 

MrK6

Diamond Member
Aug 9, 2004
4,458
4
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Thilan, if you're going to keep mentioning this in various threads, you might take an extra second to say that this is running stress testing apps like Furmark. Peak SLI'd 480's are under 500W. Actually they say 472W.
Got a link? And that's still way over the 300W PCI-e spec.
 

OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,227
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Got a link? And that's still way over the 300W PCI-e spec.

I wonder what this will be......

ares02.jpg



http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=8621


2 8 pins + 6 pin
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,209
50
91
Got a link? And that's still way over the 300W PCI-e spec.

What are we talking about here? SLI'd 480s? Or any potential X2 card based on GF100? Which way would you like the conversation to go?

As for a link, and my comment, it is right in Thilan's post, and it pertains to SLI'd 480's.
Showing 236W for each if you split the 472W. That's 236W per card, per PCI-e slot which does not exceed the PCI-e spec. Not any X2 card that we can only speculate on what they're going to do to produce one. I haven't any idea in that regard.
 

Sylvanas

Diamond Member
Jan 20, 2004
3,752
0
0
Ridiculous power consumption but impressive performance. It's as I've been saying, the nature of Fermi's architecture is benefited greatly by clockspeed increases. If we had this GPU on a smaller process it would really fly.
 

waffleironhead

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2005
6,917
429
136
Power consumption of the cards in SLI is just insane:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_SLI/26.html

624w just for the cards!!! They are going to struggle to get an X2 version out and keep it within 300w if they're already breaking 300w with a single card. Chopping up the specs and underclocking 2 GPUs to get around 300w will probably mean performance will be around an OCed GTX480. A die shrink will hopefully fix that issue.

Interesting. Are there other applications that would push the card that high(maximum), or is furmark the only thing that uses everything the card has to offer?
 

MrK6

Diamond Member
Aug 9, 2004
4,458
4
81
I wonder what this will be......
It'll be the ASUS ARES, it says so right in the link.
What are we talking about here? SLI'd 480s? Or any potential X2 card based on GF100? Which way would you like the conversation to go?

As for a link, and my comment, it is right in Thilan's post, and it pertains to SLI'd 480's.
Showing 236W for each if you split the 472W. That's 236W per card, per PCI-e slot which does not exceed the PCI-e spec. Not any X2 card that we can only speculate on what they're going to do to produce one. I haven't any idea in that regard.
Either/or, doesn't really matter. Reading my comment, it isn't clear what I was going for (and now that I reread it, I think I misread your comment as well). The test "Peak" shows 472W power consumption for both cards, but it's only using 3DMark03 with high IQ settings as a test. Furmark isn't really an accurate "real world" power consumption test, but in all honesty, I'm not sure if 3DMark03 is either, given the age of program. I'd be much more interested in seeing someone record "peak" power consumption numbers when running a game like Crysis or Metro 2033 as an indication of "real world" power usage. I was wondering if you had a link to such data, since you seemed to indicate that 472W was a more accurate number (unless I misinterpreted your statement).
 

thilanliyan

Lifer
Jun 21, 2005
11,848
2,051
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Thilan, if you're going to keep mentioning this in various threads, you might take an extra second to say that this is running stress testing apps like Furmark. Peak SLI'd 480's are under 500W. Actually they say 472W.

I wasn't trying to go around parroting that in various threads (it's only in 2 anyway). I meant to only mention it here but then saw a thread where somebody actually asked about the power consumption of GTX480 SLI which I would think very few people run (ie. I never really expected anyone to ask about that). And that 472w seems unrealistic...3DMark03 at 1280x1024 is not really going to be pushing the GPUs very hard is it?


Interesting. Are there other applications that would push the card that high(maximum), or is furmark the only thing that uses everything the card has to offer?

Games probably wouldn't. I'm not sure whether applications like Folding@Home or SETI or any of those kinds of programs would though.
 
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ArchAngel777

Diamond Member
Dec 24, 2000
5,223
61
91
I wasn't trying to go around parroting that in various threads (it's only in 2 anyway). I meant to only mention it here but then saw a thread where somebody actually asked about the power consumption of GTX480 SLI which I would think very few people run (ie. I never really expected anyone to ask about that). And that 472w seems unrealistic...3DMark03 at 1280x1024 is not really going to be pushing the GPUs very hard is it?

I agree with this. 3DMark at 1280x1024 isn't going to be a realistic power draw, not at that resolution at least. Maybe turn on some some extreme AA and AF, then increase resolution. That will reduce the CPU power consumption, but increase the GPU power consumption. Overall, it will increase total power consumption.
 

thilanliyan

Lifer
Jun 21, 2005
11,848
2,051
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Can someone look at the xbit labs numbers as well. While they do not have the new fermi cards included in this review, their numbers are quite a bit higher across the board on power draw compared to the techpowerup ones. Which leads me to wonder what the difference is in the test methodology.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gpu-power-consumption-2010_3.html#sect0

Higher where? The OCCT GPU stress test for XBL and Furmark for TPU yield similar numbers for say the 5870.
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,209
50
91
Yeah, why did they use 3DMark2003? Fifty bazillion other things they could have used, and they use 03. :::shrugs:::. 472 for two cards does seem low.
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,939
6
81
Power consumption of the cards in SLI is just insane:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_SLI/26.html

624w just for the cards!!! They are going to struggle to get an X2 version out and keep it within 300w if they're already breaking 300w with a single card. Chopping up the specs and underclocking 2 GPUs to get around 300w will probably mean performance will be around an OCed GTX480. A die shrink will hopefully fix that issue.

EDIT: Just to clarify, that 624w is for Furmark.

A dual GPU version is entirely possible, just not of the highest SKU (when has it ever been...?).

Get a couple of low voltage GTX470's, stick them on a single board, and it might manage to come in with reasonable power consumption.
The GTX295 wasn't 2xGTX285s, so I don't see why anyone would expect a dual Fermi based card to be 2xGTX480s, not only because it's not particularly feasible, but because there's no precedent for why it would have to be.

Now of course 2xGTX470, even with tweaked voltages, would still probably exceed 300w in many cases, but then the new 4GB HD5970 cards are doing that too, so it's still a reasonable possibility that there would be at least a limited run dual Fermi product which isn't much worse than the 4GB HD5970s power wise.
 

jbh545

Member
Jun 10, 2008
45
0
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A dual GPU version is entirely possible, just not of the highest SKU (when has it ever been...?).

Get a couple of low voltage GTX470's, stick them on a single board, and it might manage to come in with reasonable power consumption.

The 5970 is a 5870x2. A 470x2 isn't a very compelling card. Yeah, it's theoretically possible but to me the whole draw of Fermi is that it's #1 for performance and a 470x2 would be beat by a 5970.