We already talked about Point of View / TGT’s plans for launching the BEAST version of GTX 480, and the card was announced to come with the highest GTX 480 clocks on the market. There was talk about the GPU running at 800MHz, but we can now confirm that the GTX 480 BEAST’s ticker runs at 810MHz. We have the card and we did a few preliminary tests just to get you going until we finalize the full review.
As you can see from the photo, the water block covers the entire card together with the power components, memory and the GPU. This means extra cooling and, naturally, improved stability at high factory clocks. While the reference GPU runs at 700MHz and the memory at 3696MHz, GTX 480 BEAST’s GPU runs at 810MHz for the GPU and 3800MHz for the memory.
The GTX 480 BEAST’s water block is new as well and comes from Innovatek.
This model has just been announced and dubbed Cool-Matic GTX 480 with JetStream technology. This cooler can be ordered at a price of €189 (+ shipping), here. The block is expensive, but Injektor PRO technology, with specially designed internals, provides lower temperatures and higher overclocking potential. Seeing the price of this water block suddenly explains why PoV/TGT priced the card at €699, but we can’t overlook the fact that a GPU running at 810MHz right out of the box, as this isn’t quite an usual occurence.
The temperatures on the card are 20-30°C lower than on the reference card, with the results being higher by up to 15%.
We tested the card using a triple radiator with 12cm fans; finally, a silent GTX 480 card. Stay tuned as we’ll have the full review soon.
In Aliens vs. Predator, GTX 480 Beast beats the reference card by up to 12%, whereas in tesselation tests, where Nvidia usually takes the cake, we see the GTX 480 BEAST outrunning AMD’s HD 5970.
TessMark settings:
- 1920×1080 fullscreen
- no AA, no Post-FX
- duration=60sec
- map set 1
Stay tuned for the full review, it's coming along nicely.