Rare GTX 480 GPU with 512 cuda cores shows up
A working engineering sample of an Nvidia GTX 480 GPU with 512 cuda cores has surfaced. The GTX 480 was originally supposed to contain 512 cuda cores as standard, but this number was reduced to 480 for heat production and energy consumption.
Image via Bilibili
The GTX 480 used the GF100 GPU. This chip was manufactured by TSMC on a 40nm process. The GF100 officially contained up to 512 cuda cores. The GPU was one of the fastest 3D chips for consumers in its time, but at the same time the GPU became extremely hot and the chip consumed a lot of energy. For this reason, the production version of the GTX 480 received a less powerful variant of the chip, with 32 cuda cores disabled. The total number of cores thus came to an appropriate 480.
There have been some engineering samples made of a GTX 480 with the full GF100 chip, but these show up very rarely. However, a working variant recently appeared on the Chinese website Bilibili. The blog post about this gpu was noticed by Twitter user Komachi_Ensaka. The video card contains a cooler that is very similar to that of a reference GTX 470, with some adjustments. For example, part of the cooler is transparent, while that of the GTX 470 is made entirely of black plastic. However, the actual PCB design of the GTX 480 512 appears to be identical to that of a regular GTX 480. The higher number of enabled stream processors can therefore not be deduced from the design.
The GTX 480 with 512 cuda cores (left) and the GTX 470. Images via Bilibili and Anandtech
In 2010, a GTX 480 GPU with 512 cuda cores was released by Expreview. The GPU performed about six percent better than the regular GTX 480 according to Expreview benchmarks. At the same time, the site’s test system required a total of 644W. That same test system drew 440W with a regular GTX 480. That is an increase of more than 46 percent in power consumption, while the regular GTX 480 was not an economical GPU for its time.
The GTX 480 with 512 Cuda cores. Images via Bilibilic