14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the GTX 480 is known for being both power-hungry and hot, hardware makers will always find a way to go around these limitations if they truly wish to, and POV seems to have succeeded in this by creating the GeForce GTX 480 Beast.
When NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480 first came out, it managed to reclaim the performance crown, as far as single-GPU cards go.
On the other hand, its heat generation and power draw did not exactly make it a very good candidate for overclocking tasks.
Still, Point of View and TGT found a way around this, more or less, by using the Innovatek Cool-Matic GTX 480 waterblock.
This is a full-cover waterblock plated with nickel which, needless to say, drives temperatures a fair bit lower than any air cooler could manage.
The GeForce GTX 480 Beast has the same amount of memory as the original card from the Santa Clara company, namely 1,536 MB of GDDR5, as well as the same interface of 384 bits.
The GPU clock, however, is pushed all the way up to 810 MHz, while the shaders work at 1,620 MHz, leaving the memory at 3,800 MHz.
The TDP of the board is 320W, which will make it more or less tricky for anyone to take advantage of the support for 4-way SLI configurations.
On the other hand, enthusiasts usually have the funds necessary to enact whatever high-performance PC scheme they wish, which means that it should still be possible to find both the necessary PSU and motherboard.
Finally, video output comes in the form of a dual-DVI and a mini HDMI connector.
Unfortunately, pricing details are not known, but the card has been reviewed by a team over at Fudzilla, who seem to believe that this Beast is, currently, the fastest Fermi card in existence.