14 DAY TRIAL // The Fermi architecture was one of those products and/or technologies that managed to build a considerable amount of hype prior to its official introduction. Unfortunately, reviewers' feelings were mixed once the smoke cleared. On the one hand, performance leadership was unquestionable. On the other hand, the high power draw and heat generation of both the GTX 470 and GTX 480, not to mention their prices, were less than ideal. Fortunately, NVIDIA still has all its manufacturing partners to show that anything can be done, and EVGA is quite eager to emphasize this with its GTX 480 SuperClocked+.
The original GTX 480 is already the fastest single-GPU reference card, but it has a high operational temperature and power draw and, thus, a lower overclocking headroom than enthusiasts might like. Nevertheless, overclocking is far from impossible, as the aforementioned hardware maker has just demonstrated. The GTX 480 SuperClocked+ is equipped with a backplate and a high airflow bracket which drive temperatures lower by 7 degrees (compared to the 'regular' SuperClocked version), even as the clocks themselves are set significantly higher than NVIDIA's base settings.
To be more specific, the video board has the Fermi GF100 GPU running at 726MHz, the 1536MB of GDDR5 VRAM set at 3800MHz and the shaders clocked at 1451MHz. The rest of the feature set is unchanged, with 480 cores, a memory interface of 384 bits, dual-DVI and HDMI outputs and, of course, support for 4-way SLI, DirectX 11, CUDA, PhysX and 3D Vision Surround.
For those interested in more numbers, the product can output maximum resolutions of 2048 x 1536 Max Analog, 2560 x 1600 Max Digital and refresh rates of up to 240Hz. The overall memory bandwidth is of 182.4 GB/s. Finally, EVGA has already set up the product page of its newest offspring and has given it a price tag of roughly $550.