The Zotac GeForce GTX 480, which is based on the GTX 480, makes use of Nvidia GF100 chip, which is the fastest graphics chip on the earth and has all the latest features. It gives support to DirectX 11 gaming, which means that latest and greatest games will be made available. Its features include tessellation, DirectCompute, and Multi-threaded rendering.

This is a big, heavy card, which weighs at 913g, and has a length of 268mm. Due to its length; it overhangs the edge of a standard ATX motherboard. The heatpipes and heatsink of this card are scalding hot, hence this card should be installed in a case with additional fans for the best cooling and reliability, as the fans will blow over the top of the heatsink.

The fan has to work really hard to expel all that hot air. But the fan is not at all noisy, as the card ticks over at an acceptable 41dB.

As far as the power requirements are concerned, it requires both a six-pin and an eight-pin PCI-E auxiliary power connection. Even two or three of these cards can be run together in an SLI configuration, if there is no money constraint. This will result in ultimate performance. GTX 480 has twice the number of Stream Processors as its predecessor the GTX 285.