Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 Die Shots Appear Online

Nvidia may still be hanging on tightly to its GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 GPUs, it seems that some overseas have managed to get their hands on some Fermi silicon.

Earlier this month, German publication Heise (translated) featured two photographs of a GeForce GTX 480 that clearly showed an A2 stepping stamp. The publication measured the package to be 42mm × 42mm.

More recently Expreview captured images found on Chinese forum NGA showing more detailed die shots of GeForce GTX 480 silicon with A3 stepping. The die measured 23mm x 23mm, or 529 square millimeters.

Stay tuned for Nvidia's big reveal of final silicon at the end of next week on March 26.

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.
  • mlopinto2k1
    Neat.
    Reply
  • Hellbound
    Price???
    Reply
  • LATTEH
    O_O
    Reply
  • Whats next?
    Reply
  • ds1495
    Woah...exciting!

    /sarcasm
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    no boxes? what a bummer
    Reply
  • ohim
    this is getting pathetic seriously ... when the radeon 5xxx series were about to come out it was all about what performance those gpu`s will have, from fermi we have shots with boxes and with rulers over the gpu chip itself ... is getting annoying already.
    Reply
  • 4745454b
    At first I was trying to figure out how it went on such a huge diet. 42nm down to 23nm, your talking almost a 50% reduction. Just by spinning to A3? Looking at the pics again I think I got it. 42nm x 42nm INCLUDES the heatspreader. Thats not the chip. I wonder how much they were able to shink by going to A3? Whats the size of the 58xx?
    Reply
  • manitoublack
    if you have to ask you can't afford
    Reply
  • agnickolov
    The first image is a heat spreader, not a die. It also clearly shows 41mm, not 42.
    Reply