NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470/480 Graphics Cards Break Cover

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 and 480 graphics cards have had somewhat of a torrid love affair with the media as of recent. Sources last month were telling us that, even if NVIDIA officially announced the cards on March 26th, that the actual number of cards would be very limited. If that's true, it doesn't seem that anyone told NVIDIA, as the company is promising "tens of thousands" of the cards available at launch. We might be willing to place bets on that being more than enough to stem the initial demand.

NVIDIA, right out of the gate, is calling the GeForce GTX 480 the fastest video card in the world. And while we'd love to get our hands on the graphics cards ourselves to benchmark them, for now we'll have to take their word for it, and accept that with 480 processing cores, along with 1.5GB of video RAM, they might be on to something. Of course, with all of that power coming from the card, you shouldn't be surprised that it devours up to 250W of power. If you're not looking to blow your mind with graphics power, NVIDIA has the GeForce GTX 470 for you, which isn't as ridiculous as the 480. It's packing only 448 processing cores, and 1.28GB of video RAM. It's also only pulling 215W from your wall socket, so hopefully it might not break the bank with your electric bill.

Both of the cards will be available on April 12th, but if these reports of low numbers are true, you might want to form a line to get your hands on one. We've got our fingers crossed that NVIDIA comes through on their end, and indeed delivers those tens of thousands of graphics cards. The GeForce GTX 470 is going to cost you $350, and the GTX 480 will run you a cool $500. Is anyone out there planning on getting one of these bad boys?

[via NIVIDA]