Nvidia: GeForce GTX 480 Was Designed to Run Hot

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 is a hot card, both figuratively and literally. It features the latest and greatest from Nvidia, and it also runs quite hot when asked to push pixels. Those looking for lowering their energy consumption from their computers aren't likely to find their greenest solutions in the GTX 480. But according to Nvidia, that's the way it's meant to be played.

Nvidia's Drew Henry earlier this week updated its company blog in response to concerns of the GeForce GTX 480's hungry and hot tendencies:

We wanted to let you know that we’ve also heard your concerns about GTX 480 with respect to power and heat. When you build a high performance GPU like the GTX 480 it will consume a lot of power to enable the performance and features I listed above. It was a tradeoff for us, but we wanted it to be fast. The chip is designed to run at high temperature so there is no effect on quality or longevity. We think the tradeoff is right. The GF100 architecture is great and we think the right one for the next generation of gaming. The GTX 480 is the performance leader with the GTX 470 being a great combination of performance and price.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • frostyfireball
    "The chip is designed to run at high temperature so there is no effect on quality or longevity."

    sure, we'll see in a few months when people's cards start dying from the heat.
    Reply
  • rigaudio
    "We wanted your chips to last longer, so we made them run really really hot."
    Does not compute.
    Reply
  • ColMirage
    "It's not a bug, it's a feature!", GPU Style.
    Reply
  • mrboycom
    As i said it is great card as long as it isn't overprice yet.
    Reply
  • hunter315
    Good to know "Space heater" was on their feature list not their bug list, wonder if they make you pay any extra for that feature.
    Reply
  • mrboycom
    I don't want to do trade off for price and monopoly or oligopoly kind of thing.
    Reply
  • xenol
    Well considering that most GPUs seem to have a meltdown temperature of 115C... I wonder what the threshold is this time.
    Reply
  • scook9
    so the GPU can take it....how about the solder?!

    Remember the whole g84/g86 fiasco in notebooks 2 summers ago
    Reply
  • flyinfinni
    Ok, so they had to choose performance or low power/heat? How the heck did ATI get performance almost as good, while still using ridiculously low power and heat?
    Reply
  • z0d
    They should have made a better GPU cooler if it was made to be hot.
    Reply