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 (opens in new tab) 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.
