- ASUS Exclusive Voltage Tweaker Tehnology for up to 50% performance
- Interactive application “Design Garage” and “Supersonic Sled”
- Engine Clock: 700MHz
- 1536 MB of DDR5 memory; Memory Clock: 3696 MHz; Memory Interface: 384 bit
- DVI/VGA/HDMI/Display Port/HDTV 1080I support
Product DescriptionASUS ENGTX480/2DI/1536MD5, Enjoy the marvelous gaming experience with ASUS ENGTX400 SERIES. ASUS Exclusive Voltage Tweak Technology for up to 50% performance. Interactive application “Design Garage” and “Supersonic Sled” bundled for real-time GPU test drive. Extreme gaming satisfaction demonstrated by DirectX 11. . . . More >>
ASUS Geforce GTX480 PCI-E 2.0 1536 MB DDR5 Graphics Card ENGTX480/2DI/1536MD5
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July 31, 2010
Setup: The Asus GTX 480 went into an Antec 300 (3 case fans – 2*120mm on back, side and 1*140mm fan on top) containing an Asus m3n72-d motherboard, a quadcore AMD Phenom processor,
4GB of 1066MHz DDR2 and a Corsair 650 power supply. The card replaced a GTX280 and is powering a Samsung 2333SW monitor at 1920×1080 and the OS is Windows 7 Ultimate.
Packaging: The Asus packaging looked professional and really solid. I was a tad disappointed to not find any games bundled but then again bundled games tend to add a few dollars to the
price of the card. Unlike EVGA cards, the SLI slot on the top of the card had no cover. Not a big deal. The rest of the card had nice little plastic insulation caps (the display ports
and the gold contacts).
Noise: The card when left to automatically manage the RPM of the fan (default setting) is virtually silent. Thanks to the side fan sucking air and the air hits the card directly, the idling
temperature has been 42-44C for the last two hours (non-gaming use).
I tested out the following games at 1920×1080 at the very highest settings possible for each game and the temperature hit a maximum range of 75-80C but the GPU fan noise was barely noticeable.
- World of Warcraft
- Battlefield Bad Company 2
- Stalker: CoP
- Singularity
- Metro 2033
- Arma II
The card does run hot to very warm during intensive gaming but that’s expected with this card/nvidia’s design/GPU design. I tied up the cables and improved general
airflow in my case just to accommodate the GTX480. As of now, with a clean case, ample airflow and clean surroundings, heat isn’t an issue.
Performance: Initially, I was a tad disappointed with the card (upgrading from a GTX280). Sure, I could play my games at really high settings and they looked really
pretty but it wasn’t until I tried out Metro 2033 and BFBC2 that this card stood out. Both these games were absolute eye-candy material with very good frame rates
(40-80 FPS depending on the environment). BFBC2 especially was incredible with everything turned up (including 32x AA and 16xAF) – the gameplay was incredibly smooth
and the eye-candy just wowed me. Arma II was really smooth as well. The bottom line is that this card really shines when pushed to the limit with DX11 games (BFBC2
and Metro 2033).
I won’t be overclocking this card or buying another card for SLI – so I can’t help you there. However even with air-cooling (I have two extra 120mm fans in the front
that I haven’t hooked up to a 3pin power on the motherboard yet) and the Asus voltage tweaking software that comes with the card (or get the latest Nvidia System tools
(6. 06) from [. . . ] ), the possibility to OC the card is definitely there. I would only recommend that if you have
adequate air-cooling and you don’t live in a hot climate zone. If you are a GTX 260/280/285 owner on the fence about this card and thinking about buying another 260/280/285
to SLI, don’t. Sell your card and get the 480.
Other thoughts: I haven’t tested this card with a TV yet (gaming PC and all) but I am looking at replacing my LCD monitor with a 32″ LCD TV and the HDMI port would be
really handy. Despite having 2*DVI and 1*HDMI, the card can power only 2 monitors at a time. All in all, a good solid card.
Rating: 5 / 5