NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Rev.A2 5009 Engineering Sample Obtained!

So here it is!

Top view:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59506-2/GTX+480+ES+top.jpg]

Rear view, PCB date shows 5009, meaning it's from Week 50, Year 2009! PCB was made in Hong Kong, but the Assembly was made in USA:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59509-2/GTX+480+ES+rear.jpg]

Headshot:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59512-2/GTX+480+ES+Headshot.jpg]

Top Angled view:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59515-2/GTX+480+ES+top+angled.jpg]

Top Side View; note the translucent GeForce Led Logo and the green translucent plexiglass part, kinda resembles a GTX 470 cooler or that of a GTX 580 heh.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59518-2/GTX+480+ES+Side+angled.jpg]

Shroud removed and here is what is under the hood As you can see it still has five copper heatpipes, but the construction of the heatsink is also very different.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59521-2/GTX+480+ES+Shroud+removed+a.jpg]

The Led Logo connector, that white two pinned connector is set to J8 as being the Led Logo Power Connector, only the Leds are missing, but I have a friend that can help me with that part
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59524-2/GTX+480+ES+Shroud+removed+b.jpg]

This is how the GeForce Led Logo is mounted or placed:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59527-2/GeForce+Led+Logo+location.jpg]
It is actually a piece of translucent plexiglass, where they coloured the NVIDIA logo Lime Green, so when a led light puts light on it, it glows up really well, as Plexiglass can spread light particles very well.

Here a closeup of the GeForce Led Logo, on how it's placed:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59530-2/GeForce+led+logo+location+zoomed.jpg]

Here the difference between the EVGA GTX 480 Production Model and the NVIDIA GTX 480 Engineering Sample, a major difference for sure!
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59533-2/GTX+480_s+top+angled.jpg]

Here the rear view:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59536-2/EVGA+GTX+480+_amp_+NVIDIA+GTX+480+ES+compared+rear.jpg]

Here a more detailed rear view, bit of a weird photo, since I used an old pic of the GTX 480, just to compare with the GTX 480 ES:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59551-2/NVIDIA+GTX+480+ES+_amp_+EVGA++GTX+480rear.jpg]

Headshot of the two:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59539-2/EVGA+GTX+480+_amp_+NVIDIA+GTX+480+ES+headshot.jpg]

Sides compared, again a major difference:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59542-2/EVGA+GTX+480+_amp_+NVIDIA+GTX+480+ES+top+sides+compared.jpg]
The fan frame of the GTX 480 ES has an anthracite colour, over a black one

GeForce Logo's compared:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59545-2/GeForce+logo_s+compared.jpg]
The GeForce Led Logo looks waaay cooler imo, kind of a shame this was never added, even that the GTX 590's have these same Led Logo's it seems.

Last but not least, the Bios post, showing that it's a GF100 Engineering Release
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59548-2/GTX+480+ES+Bios+post.jpg]

Here the GTX 480 ES in my VGA table, which stand in my living room:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59555-2/VGA+Table+_+GTX+480+ES+added_.jpg]
The GTX 480 ES really fits in well

Here with the decoration on it:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59559-2/VGA+Table+_+GTX+480+ES+_amp_+Decor+top.jpg]

Closeup of the aircraft models
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59562-2/VGA+Table+_+GTX+480+ES+_amp_+Decor+side.jpg]

And a nice side shot of the entire table with it's beautiful contents!
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59565-2/VGA+Table+_+GTX+480+ES+_amp_+Decor+angled.jpg]

The card isn't stable in Win 7 the screen scrambles up, I think it needs a very special driver & OS layout to function to it's rights, my friend in Germany also has a GTX 480 ES and he will try to help me get more out of this card. Forceware 327.23 WHQL didn't even detect it as a GTX 480 xDDD Just as a standard VGA adapter, GPU-Z also could not detect my card, so I think this is either a late Rev.A1 or an early rev.A2 and possibly this Card has 512 Fermi CUDA Cores enabled, from what I can recall is that Chris "ChrisRay" Arthington told me that the GTX 480 Engineering Samples or say Prototypes are very unstable and seem to crash or run very awkwardly, and that special drivers are needed for them to function is some type of order.

If any of the EVGA or NVIDIA Engineers or Tech support have idea's to get this card running please every idea is greatly welcome!

Many thanks GAT

All I need now is to find a way to get it running It seems some friends @ EVGA have linked me a driver thatw s used for a 512 Core GTX 480 ES from TechPowerUp which they used for their sample.
ForceWare 258.96 WHQL:
http://forums.evga.com/FindPost/2034634

He linked to the mini preview of TecPowerUp's test runs with their GTX 480 ES with 480 & 512 CUDA Cores:
http://www.techpowerup.com/128276/gf100-5…ce-gtx-480.html

And that preview told the readers that ForceWare 258.96 was used, so yeah a good idea to try that out, which is this driver:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-…er-148074.shtml

GREAT NEWS!!!
IT REALLY WORKS!!!!!!!
Yeah I freaked out and I became UBAR happy for a bit there xDDDD hahaha xDDDD

Kram36 from EVGA made my day, after showing me that TechPowerUp used Forceware 258.96 WHQL with their 512 Core GTX 480 ES and had stable performance with it. Also I used GPU-Z 0.4.4 first, just to make sure it worked, after that I used GPU-Z 0.7.3 and o issues at all

So! YES!! I am about to reveal a GTX 480 no one has seen outside NVIDIA Cooperation!

Most of us might thing a GF100 VGA card and 1536MB 384Bit GDDR5, well I am about to reveal it's secrets!
Here my GPU-Z & Driver info screenshot!
http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/5959…2+5009__001.jpg

Well it does have 480 CUDA Cores BUT it has 1280MB 320 Bit GDDR5!!!!
So Actually it's like what a GTX 570 has become... Talk about weird right!

So this is what it is + some specs:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 PCI-E 1280MB 320Bit GDDR5 Rev.A2 5009 Gamma Board / Engineering Sample
GPU Speed = 527Mhz instead of 700Mhz
CUDA Core Speed = 1053Mhz instead of 1401 Mhz
Ram Speed is 700Mhz instead of 924Mhz

Talk about being entirely different!!! Maybe this card was used to design the GTX 470 & GTX 570 as a later reuse of this old idea?

After running Fire6.exe from Ex-3dfxEngineer Hank Semenec, this program was to stability test 3dfx Engineering Samples, and I was sure this was the tool to begin with as 3D went.
Fire6.exe ran dead stable with FSAA x32, AF x16 + TAA x8 Super Sampled, as you can see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=…d&v=r9tFDujqR9I

After that I was very confident that I could get some games going, I chose Dirt2, as being this is the first DX1 game made and Iwas sure it would run it just fine.

The settings I used was the following:

max details in DX11 Mode + FSAA x8 AF x16 + TAA x4 Super Sampled.
In some places you could see that 1280MB 320Bit GDDR5 wasn't enough, as if the card ran out of ram xDDD But besides that the card ran dead stable and there was no screen issues like page tearing, banding or heavy glitching throughout the game.

Here I made a two 1080p video's of the GTX 480 Rev.A2 5009 in action;

GTX 480 Rev.A2 5009 ES Test Run 01:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=…d&v=AEE4f-dbApY

GTX 480 Rev.A2 5009 ES Test Run 02:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=…d&v=Sf-dYUjvg3o

They were made, just to verify you all that I have a stable functioning Rev.A2 Engineering Sample of the GTX 480
This is as real as it is going to get, of a functioning GTX 480 ES with 1280MB 320Bit GDDR5, so far this card has never been put online in such detail

Also I was able to get BarsWF x64 CUDA Client running:
http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/5959…+GTX+480+ES.jpg

Here of the EVGA GTX 480, just to compare:
http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/5551…310_70+WHQL.jpg

Here the bootup Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPMmDZ5NsY4

You get a cool looking white boarder around the primary imag and during the Starting Windows sequence you get these vertical lines, when using an other driver than 258.96 WHQL you get those vertical lines in the Windows desktop also and while moving your mouse around it's like painting in MS Paint
With 258.96 WHQL the windows desktop looks normal, only the Starting Windows sequence remains weird looking and the main bootup s the white boarder goes, when going to the bios of the system the white boarder is also there.
So far, so good

Zitat von GrandAdmiralThrawn

Awesome stuff man! Pity about the CUDA cores, but still awesome stuff!

Yeah this is still awesome, it's also the first GTX 480 ES we have seen that has 1280MB 320Bit GDDR5, that is something I never seen in any of the previews out there, so as that goes still something awesome to have

Many thanks Bennyyy!!!

As for the GF100-375-A2 GPGPU, uhm noes I have not been that far yet, I first wanted to know even if the damn thing would work hahah
But yeah it took me over three and a half years to get one of these and it was just one of them coincidences that you come across something like this on ebay and then you obviously make the move, that seller is also in my contact list, they really loved my collection, they plan to help me find more odd cards

As for a GTX 480 Breakdown I might do that some other time, I first want to get this thing running Crysis, to answer that famous question: Can it Run Crysis?
Anyways I'd like to see you NV ES cards

What I am trying to find out now, is why does this GTX 480 ES only have 1280MB 320Bit GDDR5?

My theory was to get stable performance with less VRAM quantity that the preferred amount of 1536MB 384Bit GDDR5 and maybe the GF100-375-A2 GPGPU's had issues running at high speeds, thus maybe the lower clocks?
I dunno, it would be nice to find out more about why the castrated VRAM amount of 1280MB and VRAM bus of 320 Bit, hard to wonder who to ask this though.

Zitat von GrandAdmiralThrawn

Heat I believe is not an issue when it comes to the memory controller or the DRAM ICs themselves. Maybe just experimentation with different memory interfaces and sizes to find the "sweet spot" for the different models of the cards.

Yeah that would make sense The Ultra low Core/mem /Shader speeds do show it does not get as hot as the production model too I suppose they are trying to find a not too hot load temp, I guess there were quite a few more configs too, maybe a 512Core card was made with only 1024 to 2048 MB 256Bit GDDR5, I mean this is possible too, I reckon.

I really hope to find more of these GTX 480 Engineering Samples, they are extremely interesting to research.

As the VRAM goes of the GTX 480 ES, which I have; well I have been asking around and Löschzwerg came with the following:

"About the VRAM and memory interface. There are many different GF100 ES cards out there. I know of a card that has 512 cores but only an 320 bit interface. NV probably did this to see how a limitation of bandwidth would affect the performance. The Fermi architecture was a very big step and therefore needed a lot of different test setups."

Which makes perfect sense

After playing more around with it I found out that it's Idle temps are lots higher than as with the production GTX 480 which I have from EVGA, just a normal one not one of them factory OC'ed ones, which is for perfect reference.

In workloads when playing games it gets around 83C, might seem low, but when knowing that the GPGPU only runs 527Mhz instead of 700Mhz and the Shaders 1053Mhz instead of 1401Mhz, it's kinda crazy then

In Idle mode it doesn't get much better either, the fan always throttles slowly up to about 73% fan speed, and the GPGPU is then 73C, 1rpm = 1C, that is how the scale is.
NV probably made it do this for a reason haha, the temp in Idle is about 73C

What I also noticed is that the GPGPU, CUDA Cores like VRAM don't throttle down when in Windows Desktop, they always function at their max speed. hmm.
as you can see here a snapshot I took from GPU-Z showing the temps, voltages and speeds of all the parts within the GTX 480 Rev.A2 5009 ES:
http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/5960…+Fan+Speeds.jpg

But when playing games the Load temp does not go beyond the 83C, Can recheck this, but that is better than the Production model well as load temps go, even that it's GPGPU & CUDA Cores run lots slower, so I guess NV was aiming for those load temps for later models, but then realizing what could happen if this GF100-375-A2 would run @ 700Mhz with this cooler temps could go beyond the 120C with the HSF it was using at it's time.

So here my theory:

The GF100-375-A2 boards were clocked so lwo to avoid heat instability issues and the reason why NV changed the stock cooler so drastically was for the later Rev.A3's of the GF100 to stay stable under workloads with much higher clocks.
Due to the cooler change and revision change of the GF100 it's self, NV was able to get the temps down from 120C+ to 89C. which was a major improvement.
Although I think they did discuss the idea of giving the production model of the GTX 480 a Vapor Chamber in combination with heatpipes, which could of been better for the GTX 480 idle & load temps, then they could of gotten it to 83C under load like my A2 is doing right now.
But since this would only cost too much money production wise, they left the Vapor chamber idea out, I think anyways.

But yeah it would be nice to find this out too, in the future I hope to obtain more GTX 480 engineering Samples and research and discover them like I am doing with this A2. To obtain a Rev.A0 Alpha Card would be my biggest dream, these are the very first ever made functional GTX 480's, they were made around week 34 of 2009, back in a time when the GTX 285, GTX 275, GTX 295 & GTX 260 C216 were still being mass produced.

Back then the GF100 was known as GT300-400-A0, as successor of the never released GT212-400-A0/A1.
The GT212 was a GT200 with DX10.1 support, and it would probably have had about 256 to 384 CUDA Cores, not much is known of the GT212, but I do think that NV made a few functional Engineering Samples that had GT212's on them.

At 08:58 AM, which about 1 hour and 13 minutes later that I started up the system, the idle temp just fluctuates between 76 & 77C with a RPM that fluctuates between 76 & 77 rpm.
Here some pics showing you what is going on.

76C & 77rpm:
http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59606-1/76-77.jpg

77C & 76rpm:
http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59609-1/77-76.jpg

And it just stays there, so after this I played Miencraft for about 5 hours and the load temps did not pass the 81C, the production model would get around 89C, so this is probably due to the low GPU & CUDA Core clocks this GTX 480 ES has
When I play Dirt2 the temps get to about 83C but it never passes the 83C load temp mark, which is pretty good, as where the Production models would easily pass the 90C mark at that point, that is when playing DX11 games like Dirt2 for example :cool:

Well I have some very good news my VA friends!!!

It seems that today I have bought my second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Engineering Sample which seems to be an Alpha card!
Which I was able to obtain via a good contact of mine

So, here some pics my contact sent me

Top view:

http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59578-1/IMG_9406.JPG

Rear view:

http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59582-1/IMG_9409.JPG

Closeup of the hand done rework & J503, a 7 pinned connector, pic shows 8 holes, but 7 of 8 are connected, J503 was used to debug the card's GF100 & Bios chip, it may also have been used to program them, but that is well worth finding out!

http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59585-1/IMG_9408.JPG

Here a closeup of the rear end, showing them famous PCB holes , which even the productions models also have:

http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/59588-1/IMG_9407.JPG
More pics are to come of this GEM!!!

Zitat von GrandAdmiralThrawn

The hunt for 512 CUDA cores continues!

You bet bro, that chance only gets bigger with this Alpha card Well I think it's an Alpha Card due to the reworks it has and J503 being on it's PCB, Loschzwerg's and my Rev.A2's don't have J503 in place and they don't have hand applied reworks either so yeah we have a good chance that this card will give us them 512 Fermi CUDA Cores we all have been looking for

Many thanks Turrican

It will be very interesting to see what speeds it runs, how much CUDA Cores it has and how much VRAM it has too

As for J503, it would be interesting to find out what that was used for, hmm.
If this card is a Rev.A2, then I can put it in 2-Way SLI with the other GTX 480 ES Rev.A2 5009 I have here It would look very cool in SLI as them GeForce led logo's go as well

Zitat von CryptonNite

Sweet sample! I hope the card is working

Yeah well I think it does, as the other GTX 480 ES I got from the same seller works like a charm, even that it took me about four days to find out what driver to use in combination with it haha

That driver turned out to be NVIDIA Forceware 258.96 WHQL, not even a beta, which was very surprising! It seemed that this driver was used for all the Rev.A2 GTX 480 Engineering samples, as for the Rev.A1's well that is unrevealed terrain for me, also I have great doubts that this new GTX 480 ES is aRev.A1, even that it would be very cool, but yeah I am leaving that option open though, because anything is possible with such things

A Rev.A1 would need a much different and much older driver as well, although it would be interesting to research a Rev.A1, that's one thing for sure!

How I got to the idea for using Forceware 258.96 WHQ, well that is all thanks to kram42 from EVGA Forums He found out that Forceware 258.96 WHQL was used on them 512 core Engienering Samples:
http://forums.evga.com/FindPost/2034483

So that gave me some good hope to get my A2 running and it did do the trick so I think that 25.96 should get this new GTX 480 ES running as well. I can't wait to see the GPU-X of it haha I reallyam hoping for a 512 SP GTX 480 ES, if it's something else, no tough feelings I will keep on looking of course!xD

Some may ask why NV ES cards? Well this is much more affordable for me and also just as interesting as working with ES cards from 3dfx, ATI/AMD, Matrox, S3 or any other brand alike.
The capitalism which the 3dfx Engineering Samples are suffering from has completely backed me off, so mainly due to that, my interest moved on to other companies that also have very interesting Engineering Samples