Vapor Chambers Chill Galaxy's GTX 480

When NVIDIA formally released the DirectX 11-ready GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480, the latter became the fastest single-GPU card on the planet, reclaiming NVIDIA's performance crown, though the Radeon HD 5970 remained the sole beneficiary of the dual-GPU hype. In spite of this, the past month has not exactly been bringing news of custom-cooled GTX 480 models. In fact, it seemed like the GTX 470 was the only one getting any attention.

Most likely, the 470 saw more customizations because it has a lower TDP and price point. Thus, not only special dual-slot active coolers, but even waterblocks were unleashed for it. Meanwhile, those that wanted a less ordinary top-tier NVIDIA DirectX 11 board were forced to wait. Fortunately, the wait seems to be over now that Computex has started.

Galaxy looks as though it is especially interested in customizing the 480 as much as possible. For example, it took the card and put an extra GPU on it, a GT 240, to be exact, meant to offload all PhysX processing tasks from the GF100. Now, the other 480 version has been revealed, one more or less similar to the reference device, albeit only performance-wise. What is unique about it is the cooling assembly based not on heatpipes and fins, but on the vapor chamber technology. Overall, the product is a grey/silver-colored contraption that resembles a toy but is really a playful monster.

For those interested in a refresh on the specs, the GTX 480 has 448 CUDA cores, 1536MB of GDDR5 VRAM, a memory interface of 384 bits and dual-DVI and HDMI outputs. Galaxy's invention has a modified PCB and takes up two PCI slots. Unfortunately, clock speeds have not been mentioned, nor is it known how long it will take for this unpriced adapter to make it to market.