Galaxy’s GTX 480 SuperOverclock – The World’s fastest single GPU video card!
Overclocking
When it first launched, it was wrongly assumed that the GTX 480’s high thermals and TDP would limit overclocking. However, the maximum temperatures achieved with “worst case” FurMark showed temperatures in the upper 90s C with thermal throttling coming into play at 105 C. Clearly this GPU was built for high thermals. Now we want to know how far it overclocks. Enter Galaxy’s overclocking tool, Xtreme Tuner HD:
We were not content to play with Galaxy’s GTX 480 SOC at its factory-set overclock even though it is solidly faster than the reference GTX 480 – and quieter and cooler to boot! However, this editor has his own set of criteria for overclocking the Galaxy GTX 480 SOC further.
- Voltage is kept stock. Not many people are willing to boost voltage on a five-hundred dollar video card.
- It must be 100% stable and continue to scale with each increase of any clock.
- The fan must not go over 70%. From experience using the Galaxy GTX 480 SOC over the past 4 days, 70 percent is not annoying to this editor and is barely noticeable over the case and CPU cooling fans whereas 80 percent becomes noticeable – something we never experienced in playing or benching games with the fan on automatic.
Here are our GTX 480 clocks:
————————— Reference >> Galaxy’s OC >> new OC:
- Graphics Clock – 700 MHz >> 760MHz >> 850 MHz
- Processor Clock – 1401 MHz >> 1520MHz >> 1700 MHz
- Memory Clock – 3696 MHz >> 3800MHz >> 4000 MHz
An overclock of +60 MHz on the reference GTX 480’s core – from 700 MHz to 760 MHz with Galaxy’s overclock – brought us some solid performance increases, earning it the title of the “World’s fastest GTX 480”. Our further +90 MHz moderate overclock makes it faster still, taking the reference version’s title of the “World’s fastest single-GPU videocard” to a new height as we shall see.
We are quite certain that we could do better with our Galaxy GTX 480 SOC overclock as we had very little time to fine tune it. As a guess, with some more fine-tuning, we probably could have got 855 or 860 MHz on the core and perhaps up to +50MHz on the vRAM without increasing the voltage. However, it makes little to no performance difference to increase the card’s vRAM speed much further and it can result in instability. Our main point is to show that this Galaxy GTX 480 SOC is a screamer when it gets a moderate overclock over the Galaxy’s factory overclock. In contrast, overclocking the reference GTX 480 got us 825 MHz on the core but 1100 MHz on the memory. Overclockers always prefer a higher core over a higher memory overclock.
Overclocked Performance Charts
Let’s take a look at a dozen of our newer and more demanding games benched at the same settings that we used all throughout this review. First we look at 2560×1600 resolution and compare the averages with clockspeed scaling:
In each case, we see good to excellent scaling with clock speeds. In a few cases, the +150 MHz overclock on the core and +100 MHz on the vRAM brings a game from barely playable to playable. Let’s look at these same games at maxed details at 1920×1200 resolution:
Impressive! And best of all, the (further) overclocked Galaxy GTX 480 SOC is *still* running quieter and cooler than the slower, hotter-running and louder reference GTX 480. This is a real testimonial to Galaxy’s excellent design which make the best use of the GTX 480’s strengths while mimizing its power and heat-related issues as we shall see in the following section on power usage.
i read that 2 gtx 460 nvidia video cards in sli are blowing out the 480 version so its better to buy 2 gtx 460 cards and set them in sli then buying 1 gtx 480 card because 1 gtx 480 is really wasting money
There are always advantages of a single powerful GPU over multi-GPU. You also have no upgrade path from GTX 460 SLI as you do with a single GTX 480 or GTX 580.
I am running benchmarks for a brand new article that will cover this subject: EVGA FTW GTX 460 vs. Galaxy GTX 460, versus GTX 480 and GTX 580. It should be up in a week or so.
I couldn’t concur more. Effectively Said!