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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 in 2025: A Retrospective of the Fermi Legend

Review for Enthusiasts and Collectors

1. Architecture and Key Features

Fermi Architecture: The 2010 Revolution

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480, released in 2010, was the first graphics card based on the Fermi architecture. It was a bold step for NVIDIA at a time when GPUs began to be used not only for gaming but also for parallel computing. The manufacturing process was 40 nm, which seems archaic by 2025 standards (modern cards use 4–5 nm). The GF100 chip contained 3 billion transistors and 480 CUDA cores, which was groundbreaking for its time.

Lack of Modern Technologies

The GTX 480 does not support ray tracing (RTX), DLSS, or FidelityFX—these features emerged years later. However, it laid the groundwork for the development of Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), which later influenced professional solutions. Among its features are support for DirectX 11, PhysX for physics in games, and 3D Vision for stereoscopic 3D.

2. Memory: The Legacy of GDDR5

Memory Specifications

The card came with 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory on a 384-bit bus. Its bandwidth was 177 GB/s, which allowed it to compete with top solutions in 2010. However, in 2025, even budget cards (such as the GTX 1650) offer 4 GB of GDDR6 with 192 GB/s, making the GTX 480 unsuitable for modern games with high texture requirements.

Limitations for Modern Tasks

The amount of memory is only sufficient for older titles like Crysis 3 or Skyrim on low settings. Running modern AAA games (like Cyberpunk 2077) is practically impossible due to lack of VRAM and outdated architecture.

3. Gaming Performance: Nostalgia for HD

FPS in Retro Games

At 1080p (the most comfortable resolution for the GTX 480), the card shows the following results:

- The Witcher 2: ~35–40 FPS on medium settings;

- Battlefield 3: ~45 FPS;

- GTA V: ~25–30 FPS on high settings (due to game optimization).

4K? Forget it

Even 1440p (2560×1440) is an insurmountable task for the GTX 480. Modern games in Full HD will also suffer from lag: for example, Fortnite barely reaches 20 FPS on low settings.

4. Professional Tasks: CUDA as a Legacy

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

Thanks to CUDA, the GTX 480 was used for rendering in Blender or Adobe Premiere in its day. However, today its performance (1.3 TFLOPS) is dozens of times lower than that of modern GPUs (for example, the RTX 4070 has 40 TFLOPS). It is unfit for 4K editing or working with neural networks.

Scientific Calculations

The card supports OpenCL and CUDA, but its capabilities are limited. For educational projects or simple simulations, it might still be useful, but for serious tasks (like machine learning), it’s better to choose something modern.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP 250W: A "Heater" for Your PC

The GTX 480 is infamous for its high heat production (up to 90°C under load) and noisy cooling system. Its TDP (250W) is comparable to modern RTX 4080 (320W), but with much lower performance.

Cooling Recommendations

- Use a case with good ventilation (at least 3 fans).

- Replace thermal paste and thermal pads if the card is used.

- Consider upgrading to an AIO cooler (custom solutions), but that's mainly for enthusiasts.

6. Comparison with Competitors: A Battle of the Past

AMD Radeon HD 5870 vs. GTX 480

The main competitor in 2010 was the Radeon HD 5870 (2 GB GDDR5, 272 GB/s). The GTX 480 won in pure performance (for example, in Metro 2033), but lost in energy efficiency (the HD 5870 had a TDP of 188W). Today, both cards are relics of the past.

In the Context of 2025

Even the budget NVIDIA GTX 1630 (2022) is 50% more powerful than the GTX 480 with a TDP of 75W. Modern alternatives include AMD Radeon RX 6400 or Intel Arc A380, which support current APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan).

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply and Compatibility

- Minimum PSU: 600W (due to peak power consumption).

- Compatibility: motherboards with PCIe 2.0 x16 (modern PCIe 4.0/5.0 are backward compatible, but the card's potential won't be fully realized).

Drivers and OS

- Official driver support ended in 2018.

- Maximum OS: Windows 10 (testing on Windows 11 may be possible, but without guarantees).

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Historical value: the first GPU on Fermi.

- CUDA support for educational projects.

- Ability to build a retro PC for 2000s gaming.

Cons:

- High power consumption and heat generation.

- Obsolete interfaces and lack of support for modern technologies.

- Limited memory capacity.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the GTX 480 For in 2025?

This graphics card is not for gamers or professionals, but for:

- Collectors who appreciate the history of technology.

- Enthusiasts assembling retro systems for playing old games without emulation.

- Educational purposes (studying Fermi architecture, basics of CUDA).

Price: New GTX 480s have not been produced since 2012. On the secondary market (eBay, retro communities), prices range from $30 to $80 depending on condition.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 is a legend that reminds us how quickly technology advances. Today, it is interesting only as an artifact, but its contribution to the evolution of GPUs is invaluable. If you are not a collector, it’s better to choose something from the current generation—such as the RTX 4060 or RX 7600. But for a nostalgic dive into the early 2010s, the GTX 480 remains unmatched.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

March 2010

Model Name

GeForce GTX 480

Generation

GeForce 400

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

3,100 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

40 nm

Architecture

Fermi

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

1536MB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

384bit

Memory Clock

924MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

177.4 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

21.03 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

42.06 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

168.1 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.318 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

480

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

768KB

TDP

250W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (11_0)

CUDA

2.0

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin

Shader Model

5.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

600W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.318 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 7720 OEM

1.371 +4%

Radeon Pro 455

1.339 +1.6%

GeForce GTX 480

1.318

Radeon HD 6970M Mac Edition

1.28 -2.9%

Radeon HD 6970M Rebrand

1.254 -4.9%