GeForce GTX 480 Tortured by FurMark: 300W and Earplugs Required!


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Oh poor GTX 480… Promised, I will release a FurLessMark GTX 480 Edition 😀

But I understand why the cooler is so loud: with a GPU temperature that touches the 100°C (some tests show 96°C and others, like in the graph above, show more than 100°C) it’s a tough job to cool a hot like hell GPU without noise…

Damien (from Hardware.fr) has done a test and under FurMark, the power consumption of the GTX 480 reaches 298 Watts:

GTX480 + FurMark
Power consumption in Watts of the graphics card

GTX480 + FurMark + GPU temperatures
GPU temperature (Ambient temp: 26°C) – Darker bar is the temperature in idle mode.


Damien asked to NVIDIA why the power consumption is greater than the official 250W TDP. And NVIDIA has replied that the TDP is the max power consumption during a gaming session and is not the maximal power consumption of the card…

AnandTech, with a pair of GTX 480 in SLI, has measured 851W under FurMark for the total power consumption of the system (in idle, the total power consumption of the system is 260W). 851 – 260 = 591W for the GTX 480 SLI. Then around 295W for a single GTX 480.

For our load temperatures, we have gone ahead and added Crysis to our temperature testing so that we can see both the worst-case temperatures of FurMark and a more normal gameplay temperature.

This won’t have any significant impact on the card, but if you’re like us your eyes will pop out of your head at least once when you see a GTX 480 hitting 98C on FurMark.

Under FurMark our results change ever so slightly. The GTX 480 manages to get under the GTX 295, while the GTX 470 falls in the middle of the GTX 200 series pack. A special mention goes out to the GTX 480 SLI here, which at 851W under load is the greatest power draw we have ever seen for a pair of GPUs.

Guru3D has also a nice video showing a GTX 480 stressed by FurMark. Noise level: 45dB


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[source 1] | [source 2] | [via]

24 thoughts on “GeForce GTX 480 Tortured by FurMark: 300W and Earplugs Required!”

  1. gamer91

    you right man,
    Earplugs Required
    i like the perfomance but
    sound and power is make me die,

    nice info

  2. wakko

    How can you cool down those kind of cards when they are on SLI and have no space between them ?

    I’d like to build a quad SLI system with maybe less powerful graphic cards.. but i wonder if a system like that can be cooled efficiently.

    Any articles about temperatures and air flow of quad SLI systems ?

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  4. emil_vivi

    Man, that’s hurt!
    Now I really disappointed by Nvidia.
    Waiting almost 5 month just for this watt-eater and hard-rock-sound-maker card??

  5. Psolord

    There’s one good thing about this card.

    It will scare the cockroaches away! 😛

  6. Stefem

    Wow, 3.2 Bilion of transistor can generate a lot of heat.
    Mmmm… AMD has limited the Furmark performans under HD4xxx series to avoid harware damage, I don’t now if the HD5xxx series has the same limitation but would be intersting to see the power consumption of an 4870 x2

  7. John

    “Max power consumption during a gaming session”? What the heck does that mean? That is so vague it makes the metric completely meaningless.

    I bet anything that draws more than 250W is automatically defined as a “non-typical gaming session”.

    What a load of bull.

  8. BlackIce

    So…coming from someone who’s stood next to their fair share of planes, when is this thing going airborne? From the sound of it compared to a 280/285, Triple SLI these and you won’t want a case on casters that weighs anything less than 50 pounds.

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