14 DAY TRIAL // Hopes, speculations and a lot of cardboard. This is as much as could be, so far, gathered or seen when it comes to the upcoming GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics cards from NVIDIA. The Santa Clara GPU maker has already officially disclosed the launch of its cards, set to happen on the 26th or 27th of the ongoing month. Fortunately, it seems that the company's partners will also be bringing out their own models, with Inno3D also joining the crowd.
While actual, confirmed product photos of the cards themselves haven't come out yet, there have been a few sightings of the cardboard boxes that the devices will come packaged in. Among the companies that have, thus far, been revealed to have already prepared their respective GTX cards are Palit, Galaxy and EVGA. Now, it seems that the box of the inno3D GTX 480 has also been spotted.
Unfortunately, this case of cardboard box-picturing is no more revelatory than all the others that came before it, at least as far as NVIDIA's Fermi cards are concerned. The box only confirms what little is already known, namely the 1,536MB of GDDR5 memory, the 384-bit memory interface and several of the technologies supported by the adapter. This includes SLI, for multi-GPU support, CUDA, PhysX and 3D Vision Surround. Also, it seems that Inno3D will also be bundling an iChill gaming mat with this product.
With the revelation of this adapter, it seems that the chances for an at least mild price war are somewhat better than they were a week ago. Consumers can at least hope that, even if just by the smallest fraction, the competition between these rival companies will lower the starting prices of the GTX 400 adapters. Of course, end-users will have to wait, like the manufacturers themselves, for the actual official launch at PAX 2010.