NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 vs AMD Radeon HD 6970M

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 is an end-of-life desktop graphics card that released in Q1 2010 with a MSRP of $499. It is built on the Fermi GPU microarchitecture (codename GF100) and is manufactured on a 40 nm process.

Memory

The GTX 480 has 1,536 MB of GDDR5 memory, with a 924 MHz memory clock and a 384 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 177.4 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The GTX 480 includes 480 CUDA cores, the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 700 MHz. Complementing the processing units are 60 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 48 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The GTX 480 occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports DVI, mini-HDMI 1.3a display connections. NVIDIA recommends a power supply of at least 600 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 250 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The GTX 480 has the 248th best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 4.79% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 5,014 score and $499 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 10.05. This is the 101st best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.