GTX 480 Owners Thread

Spare-Flair said:
I find it interesting that the guys who were most vocal about Fermi being awesome are also the ones making the most claims that it is not noisy while a lot of guys who were not so vocal are saying it is as noisy as most reviews agreed they were.

I'm glad they are enjoying their cards but I can sense a hint of bias. I do agree that distance from the case makes a big difference but the actual case and side panels don't make that much of a difference themselves unless you have soundproofing panelling in my experience.

In the end, unless we all have dB meters and the same sense of hearing, it is all a very subjective matter.
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First off, its IMPOSSBLE that the card is 10x louder than a 285, that just hype. Secondly, if you're read my statements about noise, I said that my two were not any lounder under normal circumstances whille gaming than my 3 280s. If they were that loud my wife wouldn't be able sleep at night, my office if just across the hall from our bedroom.

When the fans are cranking at 100%, yes they are very loud but the only thing that comes close to doing that is Furmark, even playing Metro 2033 for a couple hours didn't push the fans over 70% and temps over 95C.

He needs to do some benchmarking showing fan speeds and temps because I GUARANTEE something is wrong with his setup or cards.
 
Astrodave said:
I run everything on highest settings now with 480 :) so who knows why the fan kicks on like it does. The performance is incredible though. I never could solve the constant hitching i got in cod4 (it was the only game that did that and i never could figure out why) but the 480 runs it like glass. I still am getting the random nvidia driver crash about every 3 or 4 days though so there is definitely something going on hardware wise in this box. it causes the card to run in 2d speeds until a reboot so it really is a pita. this is a fresh install on win7 and all hardware checks out via intel burn test for 10 hours at max burn and memtest for 10 hours straight. there's just something in my box that doesn't like nvidia drivers because the 285 did it too. Never got any driver crashes with my 4850's but driver feature issues and crossfire hitching in certain games was the pita with that setup.
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Yeah, the driver crashes are a glitct of some sort, not seen ONE in 9 days doing all types of shit, been putting the sig rig through some hell to make sure its stable, things a fucking a tank even with SLI now, found my first minor bug last night in L4D2, crashes to desktop with shaders over medium and that's a lame game technically speaking compared to Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Metro 2033, Dirt 2, and JC2, the most demanding games I think I have. Not a SINGLE issue in those games other than a config setting I screwed up in Dirt 2 that made me think I was running High Post Processing when I wasn't.
 
hey i got no axe to grind. call bs all you want. i went from a 285 to a 480 and i am telling you this damn fan is 10x louder under load, at least. the 285 never went above mid 60's in games under load whereas the 480 is always in the low to mid 80's in games so i am sure that delta range causes the fan to go apeshit and the 285 temps just never went there. as i said before, i could care less and am just stating my own observations.

edit i think the 285 saw 70's in a few games like crysis and grid and still i never heard the fan kick up all that much so the danger zone may be past 75-80 and then the fan goes nuts. just guessing here.
 
Astrodave said:
hey i got no axe to grind. call bs all you want. i went from a 285 to a 480 and i am telling you this damn fan is 10x louder under load, at least. the 285 never went above mid 60's in games under load whereas the 480 is always in the low to mid 80's in games so i am sure that delta range causes the fan to go apeshit and the 285 temps just never went there. as i said before, i could care less and am just stating my own observations.

edit i think the 285 saw 70's in a few games like crysis and grid and still i never heard the fan kick up all that much so the danger zone may be past 75-80 and then the fan goes nuts. just guessing here.
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80C is COOL for a 480, the fans shouldn't running that hard and you should be hitting mid 90s when gaming and even then the fans shouldn't be running over 70%.

At load I've said many a time the fans are loud, I wouldn't say 10x times louder than my 280s however and no where near the loudest cards I ever owned, the 7800 GTX 512s.

Not trying to pick a fight, I'm just saying this is my experience and definately my temps and fans speeds are consistent with all the major reviews. What you're saying is simply not consistant with my experience and what I've seen in the major reviews.
 
Astrodave said:
yes i was for those who bothered to read the post. i could go back and repaste my post but you already know you are wrong so move on.
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wrong about what? that you weren't clear? whatever, if you want to act like an a-hole, go ahead, be my guest.:rolleyes: and oh by the way, welcome to the ignore list.
 
haha guy doesnt read a post and asks the same question DIRECTLY below my post where i specifically say they were in the rig the same way and he tells me i am on ignore? umm ok consider me welcomed :)

i never go above 83c in games at least and the fan is very loud at that temp. MUCH louder than the 285 ever was but once again the 285 never broke 70ish and then only in a select few games. i will have to do a few tests with realtemp running and see at what temp the 480 starts to get obnoxious with the fan. my guess is that its after the peak ceiling temp of my 285. if the 285 had ever hit these temps it too would have no doubt been just as loud.
 
Astrodave said:
Damn i don't see how you guys are saying your old cards are as loud as the 480. My 480 is like 10x louder than my 285 ever was. It takes a few minutes but it gets hot and loud very quick. I run a large tj09 case with the side window off and this case has a dedicated gpu fan so I really can't imagine the fan noise if I put the side back on. I have always run with it off though on all my builds and I have had this case going on almost 4 years now. I just take the air can and wet rag to it about once a year as I change motherboards and cpus.
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Of all the aspects of hardcore computing, the loudness of your system is the most subjective one. I was among the group for a very long time who had a large number of unnecessarily fast running case fans basically creating a wind tunnel in which I could hear nothing else in my system. I basically thought nothing was loud compared to that. Once I got a decent case with some decent fans though, everything changed completely. Every reference cooler design on every semi-high end video card I tried was too loud, contrary to what I had been hearing in all the reviews I read.
 
Astrodave said:
haha guy doesnt read a post and asks the same question DIRECTLY below my post where i specifically say they were in the rig the same way and he tells me i am on ignore? umm ok consider me welcomed :)

i never go above 83c in games at least and the fan is very loud at that temp. MUCH louder than the 285 ever was but once again the 285 never broke 70ish and then only in a select few games. i will have to do a few tests with realtemp running and see at what temp the 480 starts to get obnoxious with the fan. my guess is that its after the peak ceiling temp of my 285. if the 285 had ever hit these temps it too would have no doubt been just as loud.
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Please check your fan speeds. At 82C my top fan is running at 58C and I KNOW that this isn't any louder than my 280s and if your fan is running at the SAME SPEED then I just don't see who it's that much louder. I just don't notice this rig as being any louder than my 3 280s at these fan speeds.

Temps-01.jpg
 
I have no idea what my temps are, but the card is damned hot - all I have to do is reach behind my case and put my hand on the card's vent... it's hot, the hottest card I've ever owned.

And yet I've run at least 24 cutting edge titles and not once has the fan ramped up - at the default setting, whatever that is, I can't even hear a damned thing. For the first time since I bought my GTX 275 I can clearly hear the gentle hum of my case fans, a sound which had been drowned out by the constant humming and clicking of that stupid Twin Frozer card.

Jesus am I ever happy.

The only thing is, I'm a little bit worried that the card is too silent. With every card I've owned, whenever I've turned on my computer the card has given a major blow for about five seconds. I'm not even getting that with this card. Is it possible that my fan isn't working properly - no, it must be, because I can see it spinning?

Anyhow, I'm not going to dispute those people who say the card is loud, but I can't even hear mine - and trust me on this, my tolerance for noise is actually pretty low. It must have something to do with humidity.

I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, by the way.

Also, a question: Does anybody here know why RivaTuner isn't allowing me to adjust the fan setting. The option for that just isn't there anymore. When my GTX 275 was installed I could go into RivaTuner and manually adjust the fan to 100% - I wanted to try that out with my GTX 480 but the option wasn't there?
 
WabeWalker said:
Also, a question: Does anybody here know why RivaTuner isn't allowing me to adjust the fan setting. The option for that just isn't there anymore. When my GTX 275 was installed I could go into RivaTuner and manually adjust the fan to 100% - I wanted to try that out with my GTX 480 but the option wasn't there?
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I'm guessing Rivatuner doesn't have support for the card yet?

The guy who makes Rivatuner probably hasn't been able to get one yet ;)

Go get MSI Afterburner and try it out, it should have fan support for GTX 480. Also, doesn't Galaxy have a videocard tool?
 
Alright finally got my evga 480 today and I'm pretty disappointed, it really is as loud and as hot as the early reviews stated. I'm a bit surprised because so many here said otherwise.

The single card is much louder and much hotter than my 2 8800's in sli.

Basically above 60% the fan starts to get annoying, above 80% it's like a leaf blower really annoying even when wearing headphones. It idles at a balmy 83C with the fan at 60%. But remove my second monitor and idle temps now drop to 66C. According to afterburner the core clock went from 1900 to 135 just by unplugging the second monitor. Why the hell is that necessary?!

Did anyone else notice banding in gradients? I'm not sure if it's the new driver or the card that's doing that.

Nvidia must be on crack if they think this is ok.
 
I have two monitors connected and my card idles at 74c, and under load the fan doesn't go above 68% ever since I changed the thermal paste to mx3, I guess it has to run slower to keep the temps at 90c, before it would spin in the 80's under load to keep the temps that low.

However I do agree that the downside of dual monitor is the mem speed and the core speed as well. I don't know why they can run one monitor at 50mhz core and 100mhz memory but with two monitors it has to be 400/full memory speed. Who knows may be it has to be like this.

Although in the future I am planning on getting, dell u2711 if I an get a good deal on it. I think it is finally time for me to move over to 2560res. may be when I get my tax return.
 
4 hours spent with Clear Sky tonight, and the fans never ramped up once - the card is virtually as quiet at idle for me as it is while I'm gaming. I put my hand on the ventilation grid near the end of the 4 hour session and the metal was so hot it nearly burned my hand. Running this same game, at half the settings, my old GTX 275 would've ramped up its two fans to nearly 100%, causing my computer to sound like a hair dryer. I don't get it.

What causes the fans to ramp up anyhow? I mean, my card is hot to the touch. I would've thought the fans would've gone nuts?
 
WabeWalker said:
4 hours spent with Clear Sky tonight, and the fans never ramped up once - the card is virtually as quiet at idle for me as it is while I'm gaming. I put my hand on the ventilation grid near the end of the 4 hour session and the metal was so hot it nearly burned my hand. Running this same game, at half the settings, my old GTX 275 would've ramped up its two fans to nearly 100%, causing my computer to sound like a hair dryer. I don't get it.

What causes the fans to ramp up anyhow? I mean, my card is hot to the touch. I would've thought the fans would've gone nuts?
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In attempt to keep fan noise to a minimum the fans don't kick up until they absolutely have to, and once usage drops the fan speed drops even if the card is still very hot. It's annoying but it's how Nvidia favors the tradeoff, fan noise > temps.
 
My two 480s idle at 39-45c. Before I added some more fans to my case they idled at 60-68c. The people whining about temps and noise either have bad airflow and need to do some work on their cases like I did, or have a botched TIM application and need to open their cards to fix it. Even sandwiched together and overclocked to 830, they aren't all that hot/loud anymore while gaming.
 
A couple of quick points:

1.) http://www.acousticpc.com/quiet_computer_case_insulation.html

^^ There are a lots of easy and cheap acoustic dampening kits you can buy and DIY on your own case to help out with noise. That's just one of many kinds of examples out there.



2.) The way I always ran my 280 and will run my 480 when it comes back is "stay ahead of the curve." What do I mean by that?

80 percent is too high for the fan IMO. You really shouldn't have to run it that high.

70 percent is a nice sweet spot. Just do it manually before you fire up a game. That's what I always did with the 280 and what I intend to do once my machine and 480 have come back home.

Don't wait or rely on the automatic feature.

I never did because even with the 280 it would just get way too damned hot for my liking and I'd have to intervene anyways. The fan would just start to ramp up when I'd see obvious artifacting from heat. That's worthless to me.

What is this going to do?

When I ran Just Cause 2 at 1920X1200 with ALL the eye candy maxed out including 32CSAA I went back to back through all three benchmarks several times over in a row and my temperatures NEVER left the low 70s C and the noise was essentially about the same as my 280 was.

Incidentally I stayed about 30fps nonstop with all of that. Great performance boost!

My case is a Silverstone TJ10 air cooled.

I think newer drivers have helped the heat and noise situation a little bit since the original reviews and benchmarks went up a few weeks ago.

I also have to wonder if brands matter and implementation thereof. My card is an EVGA. That's one of the best brands. Some of the folks complaining about really excessive heat and noise vs. other folks like me having such a different experience...maybe it would be instructive to match notes on which brand of GTX 480s we have and see if there's anything to it?

I have excellent hearing. I'm sensitive to excessive noise and if I had the situation I'm seeing some people describe here I can assure you I would not tolerate it and I would be very honest about it.
 
My 480 idles at 48c but it takes about 5-10 minutes when it's been under load to get back to that temp. I did some testing today and when the fan hits around 65% at around 72c or so is when the noise level first starts and at 85c or higher it starts to turn into a leaf blower. I'm pretty sure the difference for me is that my 285 just never hit those temps or higher under load so therefor its fan just never went into overdrive. Running a kombustor test at 800/1600/2100 my 480 never broke 94c or 88% on fan. It was pretty loud at that fan speed though.
 
Astrodave said:
My 480 idles at 48c but it takes about 5-10 minutes when it's been under load to get back to that temp. I did some testing today and when the fan hits around 65% at around 72c or so is when the noise level first starts and at 85c or higher it starts to turn into a leaf blower. I'm pretty sure the difference for me is that my 285 just never hit those temps or higher under load so therefor its fan just never went into overdrive. Running a kombustor test at 800/1600/2100 my 480 never broke 94c or 88% on fan. It was pretty loud at that fan speed though.
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There's your problem, your fans are running to fast. At 85C your fans shouldn't be running about 55% and should hardly ever go over 70% while gaming.
 
85c and my fan was almost 80%. At 92c on kornbustor the fan was at 88%. In games I can always tell when I am approaching 85c because the fan gets LOUD. My max game temps are always in the low to mid 80's and never higher than that. I guess I could manually set the fan to 70% but i have always used auto in the past without trouble.
 
I plan on buying a single GTX480 and im currently running a BFG 650W PSU, I take it this wont be enough power? Whats a good quality PSU these days? Thanks.
 
Astrodave said:
85c and my fan was almost 80%. At 92c on kornbustor the fan was at 88%. In games I can always tell when I am approaching 85c because the fan gets LOUD. My max game temps are always in the low to mid 80's and never higher than that. I guess I could manually set the fan to 70% but i have always used auto in the past without trouble.
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Yeah, what you're describing is a VERY cool running 480 that dosen't need the fans at the speeds you're posting. My top card is running 10C hotter and my fans are running 10 points lower, maybe thats because your fans are faster.

At any rate you could drop the fan speeds, let the temps rise and at least have less noise.
 
mathesar said:
I plan on buying a single GTX480 and im currently running a BFG 650W PSU, I take it this wont be enough power? Whats a good quality PSU these days? Thanks.
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I see no reason why that psu wouldn't work, even with a 6 to 8 pin adapter. This mentality that people need 800w psus to run a single video card is just simply not true assuming their rails are solid.
 
Hrm why does the standard EVGA GTX 480 only have a 3 year warranty yet the Superclocked version is Lifetime? I just noticed that....
 
mathesar said:
Hrm why does the standard EVGA GTX 480 only have a 3 year warranty yet the Superclocked version is Lifetime? I just noticed that....
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You're looking at a non-AR version. There's two DIFFERENT SKUs of the regular eVGA GTX 480, one with a two year warranty, the one with the SKU that ends in TR and the life warranty version with a SKU that ends in AR.
 
heatlesssun said:
You're looking at a non-AR version. There's two DIFFERENT SKUs of the regular eVGA GTX 480, one with a two year warranty, the one with the SKU that ends in TR and the life warranty version with a SKU that ends in AR.
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Thanks for the clarification.
 
Got my Koolance blocks fitted last night and hooked up in my water loop. The cards idle at 36c and, after three hours of benches, hottest they get is 51c. I'm able to hit 850core/2120 mem stable at a mv of 1025 (not sure if that's good...).

Anyone thinking about watercooling these cards should do it.
 
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harmattan said:
Got my Koolance blocks fitted last night and hooked up in my water loop. The cards idle at 36c and, after three hours of benches, hottest they get is 51c. I'm able to hit 850core/2120 mem stable at a mv of 1025 (not sure if that's good...).

Anyone thinking about watercooling these cards should do it.
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Hell yeah man! I'm gonna do me some Koolance action after I get back from Vegas next week.
 
harmattan said:
Got my Koolance blocks fitted last night and hooked up in my water loop. The cards idle at 36c and, after three hours of benches, hottest they get is 51c. I'm able to hit 850core/2120 mem stable at a mv of 1025 (not sure if that's good...).

Anyone thinking about watercooling these cards should do it.
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Any pictures? :) I'd love to see what they look like.
 
kainers said:
Any pictures? :) I'd love to see what they look like.
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Kinda a hard angle since my case sits on the ground, but here are a couple...

Pre027.jpg


Pre028.jpg


The Koolance blocks are MUCH nicer looking than I had expected. I didn't put on the included blue LEDs since they didn't match my case lighting.
 
Totally thrilled with these. My 5970+5870 trifire was gimped by a 5870 that couldn't overclock more than 10mhz without additional voltage and couldn't even hit 900 with reasonable volts. For 2560 gaming these 480s just absolutely destroy the three ATI gpus. Hell, the trifire couldn't even do Crysis with 0xAA at 2560 because it kept choking up due to lack of memory. At 4xAA these 480s show 1400mb of vram used. So the only real competition is the 2GB 5870 which costs as much and is slower, and I've heard that they glitch when in trifire.
 
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Damn i'm so tempted to buy a HX1000+a second GTX480, i think i can't hold myself anymore soon.
 
Astrodave said:
I see no reason why that psu wouldn't work, even with a 6 to 8 pin adapter. This mentality that people need 800w psus to run a single video card is just simply not true assuming their rails are solid.
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i personally wouldn't run it. i7 @ ~ 3.6Ghz systems with 480 under load use about 500W.

for example:

hx650-E-chart.png

source: http://www.corsair.com/products/hx650/default.aspx

granted this isn't your PSU, but bear with me...

under load, PSU efficiency drops. so if you put a 500W load on that corsair PSU, it operates @ roughly 83% efficiency

650W x 83% = 539.5 W

which only leaves you ~40 W of headroom. I sure as hell wouldn't want my PSU running at those specs for very long. And thats without any gpu overclocking.

no thanks
 
My single GTX 480 provides a better experience in battlefield 2 than my two crossfire 5850s. This is at 2560 x 1600 with max settings. The FPS isn't as high, but the game just feels more smooth on the GTX 480 and is less glitchy than on the 5850s. And the minimum fps is better on the single gtx 480. Right now, I consider my single GTX 480 an upgrade over my old 5850s in crossfire. I had the same experience going from a 4870x2 to a gtx 280. Can't wait to till the second gtx 480 comes in....likely won't ever buy an ATI card again.
 
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Omerta said:
My single GTX 480 provides a better experience in battlefield 2 than my two crossfire 5850s. This is at 2560 x 1600 with max settings. The FPS isn't as high, but the game just feels more smooth on the GTX 480 and is less glitchy than on the 5850s. And the minimum fps is better on the single gtx 480. Right now, I consider my single GTX 480 an upgrade over my old 5850s in crossfire. I had the same experience going from a 4870x2 to a gtx 280. Can't wait to till the second gtx 480 comes in....likely won't ever buy an ATI card again.
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We see this all the time.

Even slightly older SLI or Crossfire setups often don't 'feel' as smooth as the performance you'll get from a brand new single GPU. It's one of the reasons I prefer to game on a single GPU that's on the cutting edge of technology.

I think the mistake people make is when they have a slightly older card (and I'm talking 10 to 12 months here), and they just focus in on the benchmark numbers. They'll look at the numbers for the new card that's just been released, and then they'll look at the numbers they'd get if they were to add a second card to their system. They'll see that the numbers are close - very close - and they'll think: "Hey, I could spend half as much money and get a second card, and my numbers will be equal to the numbers of the new next-gen card that's just been released."

It doesn't always work that way.

I've noticed, lately, that a lot of people buying the GTX 480 cards are saying that this card provides an experience that somehow just 'feels' better. I put quite a bit of stock in that myself. Most times you don't need benchmarks. You can just feel it by playing the game.
 
sdy284 said:
i personally wouldn't run it. i7 @ ~ 3.6Ghz systems with 480 under load use about 500W.

for example:

hx650-E-chart.png

source: http://www.corsair.com/products/hx650/default.aspx

granted this isn't your PSU, but bear with me...

under load, PSU efficiency drops. so if you put a 500W load on that corsair PSU, it operates @ roughly 83% efficiency

650W x 83% = 539.5 W

which only leaves you ~40 W of headroom. I sure as hell wouldn't want my PSU running at those specs for very long. And thats without any gpu overclocking.

no thanks
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That's not how efficiency ratings work. If it's a quality unit rated at 650W, it provides you with 650W. The efficiency rating measures how much power it has to draw from the wall to provide you with the 650W. To use your example of 500 watt load, if the PSU is rated at 83% efficiency at that load, it has to draw about 602 watts from the wall. But that in no way means that the PSU can't handle a sustained load of 650 watts. The power rating is for maximum output, the efficiency rating is for how much juice it sucks to create that output.

That being said, leaving headroom for spikes in power demands and the natural degradation of power output as the PSU ages is still wise, but I think 150 watts is plenty of headroom.

Another question is, how is that 500 watt load being measured? At the wall? Then the efficiency factor works in our favor. If the PSU is rated at 83%, then a 500 watt draw at the wall is only a 415 watt load on the PSU's output side--plenty of margin by anyone's standards.

So by getting the meaning of the efficiency rating backwards, you're giving yourself a double hit on what you think you need, depending on where the draw is measured. No wonder people keep buying such ginormous PSU's.
 
That's true enough, and for that same reason, Omerta reaches the wrong conclusion when he decides never to buy ATI again.

The issue was - and always has been - that dual GPU setups don't feel as smooth as a single GPU setup of the newer generation. Doesn't matter whether that's ATI CF or Nvidia SLI.

Crysis was smoother on a GTX 260 than 8800 GT SLI even though you couldn't tell from the numbers.
 
Matrices said:
That's true enough, and for that same reason, Omerta reaches the wrong conclusion when he decides never to buy ATI again.

The issue was - and always has been - that dual GPU setups don't feel as smooth as a single GPU setup of the newer generation. Doesn't matter whether that's ATI CF or Nvidia SLI.

Crysis was smoother on a GTX 260 than 8800 GT SLI even though you couldn't tell from the numbers.
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I wouldn't say so. The 4870x2 was a newer card than the gtx 280. Even my GTX 280s in sli just felt smoother than the 4870x2.

I don't really think you can compare it like considering both cards have completely different architectures. Fermi was pretty much designed around the same time as the 5 series ATI cards--they just had trouble making the cards. They're pretty much from the same "generation" IMO.
 
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