Hi, i thought i would enter this forum with at least something interesting.
Well this is not a question, more of a testimonial to what would be one of the most under-rated cards ever.
I have owned mine for 3 years now, it is the EVGA SSC model, and i have it under a custom air cooler, the Gelid Icy Vision.
Image:
At stock speeds, it is nothing more than a 480, or 570 with a larger bus width yada yada yada...
The masterpiece behind this card is it's overclocking headroom.
Here is a GPU-Z Validation of my 480: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/v8m2x/
Here is my card running stable with Vsync on in BF3 at 920/1840/1900 @ 1188MV on air ( this video is an old one of mine)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xre8v6ykBB0
Now yes, this proves stability, but it is not much to go by as to what it did for performance gains...Well i can tell you this, the GTX 580 is at 772mhz stock with 4000mhz memory... this is how it gains it's lead over the 480, the cuda cores do not add much at all, around 5% at the same clocks..
Now at 800mhz, a 480 will match a standard GTX 580.
Now you can begin to imagine what a 480 can do above 800mhz.....
Here is my
Unigene heaven 3.0 run on both stock and overclocked clocks. (overclocked is only 880mhz in these results)
Here is a video i did of the difference between overclocked and stock (recording puts added strain on the hardware, and is not representative of the final scores)- See pictures below for true results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUzXGBZyUVM
Stock 700mhz 480 clock
880mhz OC 480
Same settings with 8xMSAA
All maxed out with Extreme Tesselation and 8xMSAA
All of the overclocked results above, tie and beat the Radeon 7950....
Now, i was thinking of upgrading, but i really have no need to.
We all know how hot 480's run under it's standard cooler, but not a lot was tested with overclocking and other cooling methods....
Well, here i sit typing up about a now 3 Generation old GPU..... but does that matter?
The EVGA GTX 480 can be had for as little as 150 pounds here in the UK over at www.scan.co.uk, but is in line with a few other cards, specifically AMD's GCN 7850 and 7870, but the 7850 is a great overclocker, and guzzles less gas.... it however does not have the stuff that comes with a GPU from Nvidia (we know that tech)and it also does not give you the fun a 480 will.
All i will say is, power consumption is not a massive deal, and heat can be sorted if you have the know how...
The cooler i use was 25 pounds from www.scan.co.uk and keeps this behemoth of a chip cool under all conditions.
What i meant earlier by the fun part, the 480 is a beast that will spit fire at you under it's standard configuration (neglect from Nvidia) , but as soon as you give it some love( a capable cooler).... it comes back with gift after gift, and this is what made it my most favorite and best GPU i have ever owned, the amount of performance untapped in Fermi is quite astounding.....
The 580 was and is the better card, but it was nothing more than the unlocked Fermi core.... it still sucks power like the 480, and in fact runs hotter...
The 580's secret is throttling, and a much better cooler, consisting of a Vapour chamber cooler, much like the one in the Nvidia Titan.
Anyway, this is my story/rant, cheers for listening.
-Recon.