GeForce GTX 480 PCB and Cooling Assembly Pictured
Sources wanting anonymity sent these pictures of PCB and cooling assembly to sections of the media. The PCB is that of the GeForce GTX 480, and is NVIDIA's reference design. It gives away a fair amount of information about the card that has created quite some hype over the months, which is slated for release on March 26. To begin with, the GF100 GPU on which GTX 480 is based, uses essentially the same type of package as the GT200 and G80. To help cool the large die (with a 3 billion-strong transistor count), an integrated heatspreader (IHS) is used. However, unlike with the G80 and GT200 (past two generations of extreme performance GPUs from NVIDIA), the display logic is integrated into the GPU package, instead of being spun off into NVIO processors.
With 12 memory chips on board, the GPU connects to them over a 384-bit wide memory interface. The reference design board is expected to have 1536 MB (1.5 GB) of memory on it. There's also an unusual amount of simplicity to the board design and choice of components. The GPU is powered by a 6-phase vGPU circuit using more standard DPAK MOSFETs. There is a 2-phase vMem circuit. With wide open spaces in the PCB, NVIDIA actually made two cutouts to help the blower's air intake.
