Pictures and information on a new circuit board for NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce GTX 480 has surfaced. The circuit board has been published by an Asian hardware site showing a whole new layout with dual PCIe 8-pin power connectors.
The current reference model of GeForce GTX 480 comes with one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCIe power connector, with dual 8-pin connectors the board can draw as much as 375 watt from the PSU.
The number of phases have been increased from six to eight, while the component choices looks a bit more high quality.
The layout has also been changed so that the ventilation hole we have today is no longer there and most components have been moved around or replaced. The new circuit board uses tantalum capacitors exclusively.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 without cooler(reference model)
New GTX 480 circuit board
The great question is if/when NVIDIA, or its partners, will use this board. That NVIDIA would redesign its own reference is not that likely. It sooner feels like this would be the base of a new card, e.g. GeForce GTX 485, or simply a tailored design from one of its partners.
